Free Republic

Columbia University canceled all in-person classes Monday as pro-Palestinian protests continued to rock the Ivy League institution. Last week, police arrested more than 100 pro-Palestinian demonstrators at Columbia who had set up an encampment on the New York City campus, as Breitbart News reported. Police arrested the anti-Israel protesters on a charge of criminal trespass. They were reportedly detained with no resistance. Columbia President Minouche Shafik said in a note addressed to the school community Monday she was “deeply saddened” by what was happening on campus, according to the Independent. Participants at Columbia University Pro-Palestinian Protest Chant: Oh Al-Qassam Brigades,...

The influx of asylum-seeking students caused one Queens high school to overflow on the first day of class Thursday — even though, historically, city schools are reportedly only two-thirds full because of chronic absenteeism. Newcomers High School in Long Island City felt the strain from the migrant crisis on day one of the academic year, with a line to get in that stretched around the block and some students forced to go to another building to make room.

s there evidence of in-class transmission of SARS-CoV-2 on a university campus that has mandated vaccination and masking? The answer is no. "Going back to full-occupancy, in-person teaching at Boston University (BU) did not lead to SARS-CoV-2 transmission in-class," said corresponding author John Connor, Ph.D., associate professor of microbiology at Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM). SARS-CoV-2, the causative agent of COVID-19, has displayed person-to person transmission in a variety of indoor situations. This potential for robust transmission has posed significant challenges to day-to day activities of colleges and universities, where indoor learning is a focus, with concerns of transmission...

Howard University announced it will shift some classes online due to the rise of COVID-19 cases on campus, joining other Washington, D.C.-based universities that have tightened restrictions amid the outbreaks. In a statement on Wednesday, HU officials said the COVID-19 positivity rate at the school has increased from 2 percent to 5 percent over the past week, which they attributed to the spread of the BA.2 omicron subvariant, now the dominant strain in the U.S.

Another school board has decided that honors classes will have to be done away with … in the name of “equity and inclusion.” According to The Globe and Mail, the Vancouver School Board declared its math and science honors courses “do not comply” with the district’s goal of “ensuring that all students can participate in every aspect of the curriculum.” The district said in a statement that its revised curriculum requires “an inclusive model of education” so “all students will be able to participate in the curriculum fulsomely.” Yeah, I had to look that last word up too. This is...

In the past, people displayed their membership of the upper class with their material accoutrements. But today, luxury goods are more affordable than before. And people are less likely to receive validation for the material items they display. This is a problem for the affluent, who still want to broadcast their high social position. But they have come up with a clever solution. The affluent have decoupled social status from goods, and re-attached it to beliefs. .... Thorstein Veblen’s famous “leisure class” has evolved into the “luxury belief class.” Veblen, an economist and sociologist, made his observations about social class...

FRANKFORT, Ky. (WKYT) - A U.S. District Court judge ruled late Wednesday that Kentucky’s religious schools can hold in-person classes. Danville Christian Academy filed a lawsuit Friday and Attorney General Daniel Cameron and other schools joined it. They claim the mandate shouldn’t apply to them because of their religion. Judge Gregory F. Van Tatenhove granted Danville Christian Academy’s request for an injunction so the school could continue with in-person learning. In his opinion, the federal judge said that closing religious schools “prevents the corporate nature of religious education which is insinuated with worship, prayer, and mentoring.”

More fun and games with street thugs

The pandemic and the nation's brutal economic collapse are combining to crush the college hopes of low-income and first-generation students. Some high school seniors are dropping their first-choice schools in favor of colleges that are cheaper and closer to home, early surveys have found. Others are thinking about going part-time, or taking a gap year so they can work and bail out families whose breadwinners are suddenly out of work. Those who work with low-income students worry freshmen from poor families who were sent home this semester may never return and high school seniors won't get the hands-on help they...

American universities from California to New York have canceled classes as the novel coronavirus has affected more than 100,000 people and transformed into what CNN is calling a pandemic. The cancellations have been focused in states and areas hardest hit by the virus, including the Seattle area, California and New York. The Seattle area has seen the highest number of confirmed coronavirus cases in the U.S. so far, and several universities in the region have canceled classes during the outbreak as part of a "social distancing" strategy. The University of Washington, based in Seattle, said that classes will no longer...

The University of North Carolina, Charlotte, offers a staggering 345 courses on the topic of diversity and social justice. The University of North Carolina, Charlotte released a list of their “Diversity Courses” that spans 21 pages and covers academic disciplines such as Religious Studies, Women’s and Gender Studies, Languages and Culture Studies, and Africana Studies. Although it’s unclear why UNC Charlotte needs so many “Diversity Courses,” Associate Dean Shawn Long says that the topics discussed in such courses are beneficial to all of the members of the school’s community. “When we consider the concept of diversity, broadly speaking, we mean...

Donald Trump is turning to testimonials from former customers of his for-profit Trump University on Wednesday, as the presumptive Republican nominee faces renewed political scrutiny and ongoing litigation in separate cases.

The Detroit Public Schools teacher sickouts have received national media attention for the poor conditions in which teachers say they must work. However, the claims of overcrowding in the classrooms appear to be baseless, according to class size information received from the school district under a Freedom of Information Act request. Media reports have parents, teachers and union officials claiming classes of more than 40 students are common. But the average, or mean, classroom size in Detroit Public Schools is 22.45 students, with the median class size at 24. The records cover 11,588 individual classes at the start of the...

The term “paramountcy of the party” is often touted by totalitarian regimes in which the government and its bureaucrats are solely comprised of members of a single party. The ruling class is comprised entirely of party members, the elites are party members, the military is a wholly owned subsidiary of the party, in every facet of life the favored are members of the party; the party is the state. Whatever other options there are, they are there simply for show and few of the members ever dare to oppose their oppressive regimes. One needs to only look at the history...

Even National Public Radio (NPR) occasionally realizes that some college courses are straight from la-la land. A recent report from the Protojournalist mentions an unusual offering in the area of Mythology and Folklore at Harvard called Maledicta, which is described as “an academic exploration of ritualized verbal abuse,” according to a report in the Protojournalist. Students taking this class apparently examine “international traditions of vituperation and cursing in their folkloristic, historical and sociological settings.” Not only that, “they learn about practices including Turkish verbal duels, Scottish flyting and African-American “dozens.” Rutgers University also proves it is no slouch in the...

Thousands of San Francisco Bay Area residents may have been exposed to measles last week when an unvaccinated student at the Unversity of California, Berkeley, attended classes and rode the area's BART transit system. Public health officials in Contra Costa County, outside of San Francisco, said anyone riding BART from Feb. 4 to Feb. 7 during the morning or late evening commutes could have been exposed to the highly contagious respiratory virus. The young man in his 20s lives in the county and was confirmed to have measles on Wednesday. He was likely infected while traveling recently in Asia, health...

Put this in your pipe and smoke it Colorado, because you aren’t getting married without first attending state-mandated, premarital education classes – at least if the same voters who legalized weed will now allow in such a big-government proposal. According to the proposed initiative, which will require 86,105 signatures to place the issue on the November ballot, the Denver Post reported, first-time couples wanting to wed would be required to attend 10-hours of “marriage education,” second-time couples 20-hours, and if it’s your third trip down the proverbial aisle . . .

Some classes at West Point are being combined or canceled and military faculty members are being forced to fill in for civilian instructors furloughed because of the government shutdown, academy officials said Thursday. The academy furloughed 1,422 civilian employees this week, including 132 faculty members. …

McConlogue approached Leo, a 36-year man who lives on the streets of lower Manhattan, on Thursday and gave him two options. The first was $100 in cash. The second option on the table was a laptop, three JavaScript books and two months of coding instruction from McConlogue. Soon, McConlogue will deliver him a Samsung Chromebook with 3G connectivity, three JavaScript books, a solar charger for the laptop and something to conceal the laptop in. He will spend an hour before work every morning teaching him the basics of software coding.

CARSON CITY — Gov. Brian Sandoval has said his administration has two top priorities: education and economic development. When it comes to education, Sandoval has used both the bully pulpit of his office and his budget to call for school choice, ending social promotion, expanding full-day kindergarten and improving funding for programs targeting English-language learners. But Sandoval and his administration have been largely silent on one key issue important to education advocates, school districts and Democrats: reining in class sizes. That’s not to say he’s ignoring it completely.