Free Republic

Yale University will once again require standardized testing for students applying for admission in the fall of 2025. The decision, announced today, ends the test-optional undergraduate admissions process that had been in place at Yale since the pandemic. According to the announcement, the past four years of test-optional admissions had given Yale what it described as “an invaluable opportunity to think deeply about testing policy and to generate new data and analyses. With testing availability now fully restored for prospective applicants around the world, we have reevaluated our policy with the benefit of fresh insights.” Yale is describing its new...

Sidney Chalhoub pledged to support 'Palestinian liberation' as part of Harvard Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine ... The chairman of Harvard University's history department is a member of a faculty group, Harvard Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine, that posted an anti-Semitic cartoon over the holiday weekend depicting a hand emblazoned with the Star of David holding a noose around the necks of one black man and one Arab man. In the background, a black arm swings a machete scrawled with the phrase, "liberation movement." The image was posted alongside a message from the faculty group arguing...

Senate leaders on Sunday released the details of a long-awaited comprehensive border security bill, which also contains a substantial foreign aid component.The discussions, led by Senators James Lankford (R-OK), Krysten Sinema (I-AZ), and Chris Murphy (D-CT), come after months of negotiations with the Biden regime, seeking to address both the ongoing crisis at the U.S. southern border and foreign policy commitments abroad.The 370-page deal, according to Senator Patty Murray (D-WA), Chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, claims it reflects weeks of good-faith negotiations, balancing domestic concerns with urgent international aid needs.“As Ukraine runs low on ammunition to fend off Putin’s...

The Bridgeport, Conn., mayoral election that began last fall is set to conclude at the end of the month, amid multiple election fraud complaints and investigations. Alleged election fraud has overshadowed the largest city in Connecticut as the mayoral election that was originally scheduled last year is set to conclude in a couple of weeks. A "Do-Over" mayoral election was ordered by a judge in November after a video was posted online that appeared to show a supporter of incumbent Democrat Mayor Joe Ganim stuffing stacks of papers into an absentee ballot drop box during the September Democratic mayoral primary...

State Senate Minority Leader Kevin Kelly was abruptly and surprisingly replaced by first-term Sen. Stephen Harding as caucus leader on Friday, culminating tensions that has been brewing since before the start of the legislative session earlier this month. Kelly, a lawyer, was in his fourth year leading the minority caucus as a moderate trying to keep together the dozen-member group, including more-conservative lawmakers. His role was to help the caucus reach consensus on legislation often pushed by the 24-12 Democratic majority, and summing up floor debates prior to the final word from Senate President Pro Tempore Martin New of New...

Harvard is among the many U.S. schools that remain committed ... as of February 6, 2024, an astounding 68 American colleges and universities still have Covid shot mandates in place. Yes, you read that correctly. There are 68 schools in the United States that continue to push the mRNA serum on college students across America. ... The list includes historically elite schools like Harvard and Johns Hopkins. It also includes a variety of ultra leftist colleges in California and New York, and elsewhere, coupled with a significant amount of historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs). ... Speaking of Harvard, they...

Harvard University is obstructing a congressional probe into campus-wide anti-Semitism, leading lawmakers to warn the Ivy League school that it will face a deluge of subpoenas if it continues to stonewall the investigation. "Harvard's responses have been grossly insufficient, and the limited and dilatory nature of its productions is obstructing the Committee's efforts," Rep. Virginia Foxx (R., N.C.), the chairwoman of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, wrote to interim Harvard president Alan Garber on Wednesday. Harvard has until Feb. 14 to produce documents outlining its internal response to a growing wave of anti-Semitism on campus, including records...

WINDSOR LOCKS, Conn. — For several years, a problem has been brewing for Lockheed Martin’s F-35: future upgrades will make the jet run even hotter than it does now, more than its current cooling system is believed to be able to handle. In the near term, Pentagon officials expect that a high-profile upgrade to the plane’s F135 engine will avoid most of these cooling issues. But in the longer term, the military fears future aircraft upgrades needed to keep pace with threats decades down the line will push the heat factor even higher, and officials have recently suggested they’re casting...

Several large public universities are getting multimillion dollar budget cuts.. The bursting of the higher education bubble has finally struck its first blow, and it is a serious one. Several major public universities have announced multimillion dollar budget cuts in January, citing enrollment declines among other factors. Pennsylvania State University expects to cut $94 million from its budget starting in July 2025. The University of Connecticut (UConn) announced significant budget cuts in response to its projected $70 million deficit. And the University of New Hampshire (UNH) will slash expenses by $14 million. These cuts were a long time coming—higher education...

On Friday, Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont (D) said that the fact that they cut taxes and “kept things open during COVID” has helped the state grow its population and the state has managed to balance its budget because it has attracted more people to the state. On CNBC’s “Squawk Box,” Lamont stated, “We inherited a $2 billion deficit. The first thing thing I wanted to do five years ago was make sure we didn’t raise taxes. That’s what the five previous governors had done. Now, it’s five years later, we’ve got our budget balanced. We’re making investments. And we’re able...

On Friday’s broadcast of CNBC’s “Squawk Box,” Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont (D) stated that he has offered to let President Joe Biden use the Connecticut Guard to help secure the border, but Biden won’t use them. Co-host Andrew Ross Sorkin asked, “You may need housing for a different reason, immigration. You have people being bused up there — not in the same way that is being — that’s happening here — what do you think of the immigration problem in America, and do you think that blue states, which, for so long, thought this was a not in my backyard...

Dalal Saeb Iriqat said she would never forgive Israel for 'making us take their children and elderly as hostages'.. The Harvard Kennedy School is set to host a Palestinian professor who called Hamas’ massacre of Israeli civilians a “normal struggle for freedom,” and said she would never forgive Israel’s government for “making us take their children and elderly as hostages.” Dalal Saeb Iriqat, a professor of diplomacy and conflict resolution at the Arab American University in Ramallah is set to speak at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center as part of its Middle East Dialogues series on March 7, 2024....

Balada [the school principal] says that the [menstrual product] dispenser in the boys bathroom was installed at 9:30 Wednesday morning and “by 9:52 AM, tampons were on the floor, the newly installed distribution box was ripped off the wall along with the masonry anchors, and the distribution box itself was destroyed.”

The university's VP of Academic Affairs said the changes will no longer 'mask' students' 'demonstrated abilities'.. An Oregon university announced they will abandon failing letter grades, citing a "GPA fixation" that negatively impacts students. Western Oregon University issued a news release earlier this month that revealed the school would be replacing "D-" and "F" grades with "no credit" to discourage undergrads from dropping out. ... The difference is that the grade of NC will not negatively impact student GPAs, ... the decision came after data from the university showed that 65% of freshman students who dropped out had earned at...

Bridgeport, Connecticut redid their election last night and there's already been allegations of voter fraud. Dead people voting, ballot applications being given out like candy and ballot harvesting.

It's not just Claudine Gay. Harvard University's chief diversity and inclusion officer, Sherri Ann Charleston, appears to have plagiarized extensively in her academic work, lifting large portions of text without quotation marks and even taking credit for a study done by another scholar—her own husband—according to a complaint filed with the university on Monday and a Washington Free Beacon analysis. The complaint makes 40 allegations of plagiarism that span the entirety of Charleston's thin publication record. In her 2009 dissertation, submitted to the University of Michigan, Charleston quotes or paraphrases nearly a dozen scholars without proper attribution, the complaint alleges....

In just one week voters in Bridgeport will head to the polls…again. They’ll be casting their ballots for mayor in an unprecedented do-over primary after a judge found evidence of absentee ballot fraud. The big question is whether voters will be motivated enough to vote after doing it twice already. “I am planning on voting. There’s one candidate I prefer over the other one,” remarked one Bridgeport voter who declined to provide his name. Round three of voting in Bridgeport is thanks to a video of city employee Wanda Geter allegedly filling ballot boxes with envelopes. “It’s sad that nothing...

Connecticut’s Office of the Secretary of the State warned voters Monday about election fraud concerns and encouraged residents to vote in person. According to a press release from the office, Democratic Secretary of State Stephanie Thomas is urging voters to head to their polling stations instead of filling out an absentee ballot in the upcoming January primary in Bridgeport. Thomas noted that the state is working to increase presence at City Hall but that it has only two officials slated to monitor Bridgeport elections, the CT Examiner reported. She stated that they “cannot do it all.” “We encourage anyone who...

For a long time, people (including me) have been calling for major changes in higher education. Now someone is doing something about it. Hedge-fund tycoon Bill Ackman is waging war to make universities accountable. Ackman started his campaign by demanding the resignations of University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill, Harvard President Claudine Gay and Massachusetts Institute of Technology President Sally Kornbluth after the trio’s shambolic performance before Congress on antisemitic harassment on their campuses. Magill and Gay are now gone, and Kornbluth is worried. Penn’s board of trustees pushed Magill out pretty quickly. Gay, being a diversity hire, was harder...

Academic dishonesty and crime are alike: ... When my peers are found responsible for multiple instances of inadequate citation, they are often suspended for an academic year,” wrote the student who sits on Harvard’s honor council.. When the president of their university is found responsible for the same types of infractions, the fellows of the Corporation ‘unanimously stand in support of’ her ... Gay’s plagiarism, the Harvard Corp. showed that its commitment to academic integrity was as phony as its other ideals. ... serious academic-integrity offenses, are too often ignored or excused—much like petty crimes in cities with left-wing governments....