Free Republic

A judge has acquitted a controversial pro-family activist from a July 2008 charge of trespassing at a Canadian university. William (Bill) Whatcott was arrested by campus security at the University of Calgary and put into a holding cell for distributing a pamphlet that addressed the “harmful consequences” of homosexuality. Whatcott, in an email to LifeSiteNews, called the ruling a “victory for all Canadians who value freedom of expression and religious liberty on our university campuses.” Judge J.D. Bascom ruled from the Provincial Court of Alberta on November 15th that the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms “applies” to the University...

A Fort Worth high school student was sent to the principal’s office earlier this week for telling another classmate he believes homosexuality is wrong. Fourteen-year-old Dakota Ary spent most of the day Tuesday serving an in-school suspension. It was punishment for discussion in his German class at Fort Worth’s Western Hills High School. “We were talking about religions in Germany. I said, ‘I’m a Christian. I think being a homosexual is wrong,’” he said. “It wasn’t directed to anyone except my friend who was sitting behind me. I guess [the teacher] heard me. He started yelling. He told me he...

Crossing Red Lines By Ari Bussel Those who serve in the military are owed a great debt of gratitude. In the United States, we are registered for selective service, but most of us have not experienced a draft. Military service in Israel is mandatory for every man and woman age 18. Men serve three years, women two unless they fulfill combat assignments that require three years as well. For those who become officers, an extra year is required. In addition to Jewish people, most Druze men and a small number of Bedouin men volunteer for service as well. However, from...

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- The U.S. Department of Education is investigating a faculty member's complaint that a series of pro-Palestinian events at a California university crossed the line into anti-Semitism and created a hostile environment for Jewish students. The department's Office for Civil Rights notified the University of California, Santa Cruz last week that it planned to look into allegations made by Hebrew lecturer Tammi Rossman-Benjamin dating back to 2001.

Study: Gay Parents More Likely to Have Gay Kids (Oct. 17) -- Walter Schumm knows what he's about to do is unpopular: publish a study arguing that gay parents are more likely to raise gay children than straight parents. But the Kansas State University family studies professor has a detailed analysis that past almost aggressively ideological researchers never had. When one such researcher, Paul Cameron, published a paper in 2006 arguing that children of gay parents were more likely to be gay themselves, the response from the academic press was virulent, to say nothing of the popular press; the Southern...

Left-wing radicals throughout history have at least one thing in common: They like to claim that their own freedom of speech is endangered while endangering the first amendment rights of others. For example, the screenwriters in Hollywood who claimed their constitutional rights were violated by the House UnAmerican Activities Committee in the 1940s with questions about their membership in the Communist Party did not talk about the anticommunist references they had been keeping out of films. They did their level best to keep anti-communists out of the industry itself but were never called on it either, even by allegedly red-baiting...

Radical Academic Credos Bethany Stotts, January 6, 2010 For supporters of David Horowitz’s student Academic Bill of Rights, academic freedom is about protecting vulnerable students from indoctrination at the hands of radical professors. However, one DePaul University professor recently argued that Horowitz’s conception of academic freedom promotes a “distinctly right-wing agenda” and “contains within it a backhanded insult to the intelligence of the students he is purporting to protect.” “If the professors listed in Horowitz’s The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America were as silly and irresponsible as Horowitz suggests, why would any student enroll in their courses?” asked Professor...

Supporters of Darwin’s theory continue to distinguish themselves on America’s college campuses—not for their reason and logic, but for their incredible ill manners and an almost pathological inability to engage in civil discussion. Last week, a factually-challenged attack on intelligent design was published in The Nevada Sagebrush, the student newspaper at the University of Nevada, Reno. Nothing new in that; I see ill-informed articles on intelligent design all the time. But after my colleague Rob Crowther posted a short comment suggesting that readers might actually want to hear from intelligent design proponents themselves (imagine that!), the Darwinist thought-police came out...

As soon as I began to speak, the anti-Horowitz demonstrations started. The second row of seats had been entirely occupied by members of ACT-UP the militant AIDS organization that had made headlines by bursting into a mass at New York’s St. Patrick’s Cathedral and throwing condoms on the altar. To my event they brought giant white signs with black lettering, which they now thrust into the air in response to each statement I made. This sea of signs served to block the podium I was speaking from, screaming in giant capital letters: “LIES!” “PIG!” “BIGOT!” As if this were not...

These events illustrate the strategy that has been adopted by opponents of academic freedom: Deny that a problem exists at all, and then discredit anyone who says that it does.-- "Intellectual Muggings"

As a freshman, I haven't been at UT-Martin for very long. But some problems are so obvious that they don't take very long to notice. In my studies I quickly realized that when it comes to the theory of evolution, Darwin is the only one who gets to answer questions-or ask them. I want to question this theory-to test it; check its credentials. And I want honest, thoughtful answers to my questions, not pre-formulated quips and deflections. But I have learned that if I'm not an evolutionist, my questions don't get credited, or even heard. When I ask why theories...

From The Recorder (Central Connecticut State University): On October 3, 2008, [John] Wahlberg and two other classmates prepared to give an oral presentation for a Communication 140 class that was required to discuss a “relevant issue in the media”. Wahlberg and his group chose to discuss school violence due to recent events such as the Virginia Tech shootings that occurred in 2007. Shortly after his professor, Paula Anderson, filed a complaint with the CCSU Police against her student. During the presentation Wahlberg made the point that if students were permitted to conceal carry guns on campus, the violence could have...

Up the Academy by: Malcolm A. Kline, October 31, 2008 In-house audits that Academia inflicts upon itself invariably give the Ivory Tower a clean bill of health but a recent study at least attempts to scratch beneath the surface. “Our analysis of 38 private colleges and 6,807 student respondents indicates that, consistent with a number of previous studies, faculty members are predominantly liberal and Democratic,” Mack D. Mariani and Gordon J. Hewitt write in the October 2008 issue of P. S.: Political Science and Politics, a monthly journal. “We find little evidence, however, that faculty ideology is associated with changes...

CSULB: Academic Senate distances itself from Kevin MacDonald's controversial works.LONG BEACH - The Cal State Long Beach Academic Senate has voted to disassociate itself from the writings of a controversial psychology professor who has been accused of having anti-Semitic and white ethnocentric views. "While the Academic Senate defends Dr. Kevin MacDonald's academic freedom and freedom of speech, as it does for all faculty, it firmly and unequivocally disassociates itself from the anti-Semitic and white ethnocentric views he has expressed," according to the resolution Thursday. Responding to the resolution, MacDonald, a tenured professor, said "everyone has ethnic interests." "This is an...

Ward Churchill is baaaaack! by: Deborah Lambert, June 05, 2008 Although Ward Churchill was finally fired by the University of Colorado, Boulder for plagiarism and dishonest scholarship rather than his 9-11 remarks, you'd never know it from his website at www.wardchurchill.net, aka the “Ward Churchill Solidarity Network,” dedicated to “Defending Academic Freedom and Political Dissent.” The site includes a petition to reinstate Ward Churchill, and a statement of support from Noam Chomsky....

Keith John Sampson never thought he could get in trouble for reading a book, especially not on a college campus. But that’s what happened. Sampson is a man in his early 50s. He does janitorial work for the campus facility services at IUPUI, where he’s been gradually accumulating credits for a degree in communications studies. He has 10 credit hours to go. .... The book is about how for two days in May 1924, a group of Notre Dame students got into a street fight with members of the Ku Klux Klan. The Klan was meeting in South Bend for...

Ford Foundation Underwrites Diversicrats by: Malcolm A. Kline, January 30, 2008 Believe it or not, a left-leaning foundation has taken notice of the risk to free speech on American college campuses. “Too often, academic freedom principles have been twisted to defend the freedom of students not to hear views that might cause offense, and the focus has become freedom from hearing rather than a freedom to express controversial perspectives,” the Ford Foundation’s Alison Bernstein said at Harvard last year. Unfortunately, the Foundation’s solution was to offer grants to the very people who make that twist—college administrators. “Of the 2,400 university...

VATICAN CITY — The pope's top aide said Wednesday that Benedict XVI's reason for canceling a visit to a Rome university was that he did not want to create a pretext for further "unpleasant" protests by professors and students opposed to the religious leader speaking at a secular campus. Anti-pope slogans have appeared on banners and posters around buildings at La Sapienza University, where Benedict was to have spoken on Thursday. A group of professors, mainly from the sciences, wrote to the university rector late last year to object to the pope's visit, depicting Benedict as a religious figure opposed...

Chicago, Ill- In arranging a series of panels on academic freedom in the classroom, the Modern Language Assocation (MLA) hosted a panel on French and Francophone studies, Chicano literature, and Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transsexual Queer (LGBTQ) issues to discuss barriers to academic freedom. Largely avoiding discussions of students’ academic freedom, the panel argues that, especially among politicized subjects, professors’ academic freedom is threatened by student evaluations, scarce tenure, and even their own professional code of ethics. Code of Ethics“Professional ethical standards, in other words, can be put into service when an institution deems fit to curtail academic freedom when it...

Deconstructing Universal (Conservative?) Values by: Bethany Stotts, January 03, 2008 Chicago, Illinois- In this uncertain time of global conflict, some professors believe it is time to teach students to reevaluate and deconstruct America’s real enemies—conservatives, science, democracy, and capitalism. “And so what we’re seeing in globalization is just an extension of our universality. And I would argue the three main modern forms of universality are science, democracy, and capitalism. So that’s one [type] of rhetoric that I think we have to unpack for our students,” said English Professor Robert Samuels at the annual Modern Language Association (MLA) Convention. In other...