Free Republic

Anyone who is keeping up with the latest happenings in higher education knows that this year has seen many institutions backpedaling on DEI programs. From Florida limiting public funding for DEI at its colleges, to the University of Wyoming closing its DEI office, to schools in Kansas, Idaho, and Oklahoma enforcing bans and limitations, the public’s patience with the Left’s “diversity” schemes seems finally to be running out. In May of this year, the UNC System joined these ranks when the Board of Governors repealed and replaced Section 300.8.5 of the policy manual, thus effectively banning DEI offices, employees, and...

Three and a half years after the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals prohibited a public university from retaliating against a professor for refusing to use a student's preferred pronouns, the Cincinnati-based court went even further by stripping qualified immunity in a similar case.University of Louisville officials can be held personally liable for allegedly retaliating against a psychiatry professor through a "hostile, humiliating work environment" designed to chill his speech and not renewing his contract after he questioned so-called gender-affirming care at a Heritage Foundation event in 2017, a three-judge panel unanimously ruled.President Biden nominee Judge Andre Mathis, who dissented...

“The science and practice of logistics is often defined as getting the right stuff, in the right quantity, to the right place at the right time.For those who are preparedness-minded, logistics takes on additional nuances.Unlike those in business and industry, where orders for goods drives the logistics process, Preppers are preparing for threats that have no pre-determined date, have many unknown impacts including time to recovery (if ever), and spatial impact.Whereas a car manufacturer, who has an order for 100 cars knows they need 400 tires (not including the little donut spare). Preppers have no idea how much of a...

,big>Antisemitism isn’t borne of ignorance at my alma mater. Antisemitism is taught there.Reading the report issued last month by Columbia University’s Task Force on Antisemitism, one could be forgiven for thinking that it describes the University of Heidelberg circa 1933. It contains accounts of observant Jews being harassed and assaulted, and open calls for the murder of Jews. But no, this is not Nazi Germany. This is the Upper West Side of Manhattan in 2024. There—in one of the nation’s most elite enclaves of higher learning—the oldest hatred is alive and well, gussied up in academic robes. The admittedly “serious...

An article in Salon Magazine written by Christopher Cotton asserts that "only a person secure in his masculinity would order schools to stock boys' restrooms with tampons. The Democratic nominee for vice-president Minnesota Governor Tim Walz is such a man. He is the perfect fit for the post-patriarchy world that a President Kamala Harris will thrust upon this country and the world." Walz said "Christopher Cotton describes me to a tee. MAGA extremists think they are mocking me with the 'tampon Tim' nickname, but I'm proud to wear it and look forward to the day when every man, woman, and...

Episode Summary: In this episode, Keith Graves, a retired police officer with over 30 years of experience and an expert in drug recognition, discusses his observations about Vice President Kamala Harris. Keith argues that Harris displays signs of being under the influence of central nervous system (CNS) depressants such as alcohol or prescription drugs. He analyzes her speech patterns, body language, and other behavioral cues as evidence of intoxication. Keith also raises concerns about the potential implications for national security and church safety should she ascend to the presidency. The episode delves into topics including: Recognizing signs of drug impairment...

[Editor’s note: Earlier this month, University of Austin provost Jacob Howland delivered remarks to the new institution’s inaugural faculty. The Martin Center is pleased to present the following (lightly edited) transcript of his talk.] Today, August 12, 2024, is the birthday of the University of Austin. This is the very first meeting of the assembled faculty and the first day of the first faculty orientation in the history of UATX. Today we begin to form our academic culture and to prepare for the arrival of our first class of undergraduates. “Don’t you know,” Socrates asks when he first takes up...

How does your state rank in terms of encouraging legal gun ownership? Our results are surprising! We took into account the current gun laws, current legislators' past voting history, 2A-centric taxes, and more to bring you this comprehensive list for 2024.~~SNIP~~Report Highlights:New Hampshire is #1 thanks to its incredibly relaxed gun laws, low crime rates, and lack of state sales tax.West Virginia is #2 due to recent legislative actions to remove firearm restrictions and reduce sales tax on firearms and ammunition.Arkansas, Montana, and Mississippi are #3, #4, and #5, thanks to their pro-2A governors, stand-your-ground laws, and relaxed carry and...

A recent Gallup survey found that confidence in America’s colleges and universities has plummeted in the past decade, with only 36 percent of today’s adults expressing “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in our higher-education system—down from 57 percent in 2015. Respondents offered several reasons for their low opinions, including the cost of obtaining a degree, the difficulty in finding a high-paying job even with a degree, and the perception of college campuses as indoctrination centers. I’d like to focus, in this essay, on the first of those reasons. The others are important, too, and may well...

The same state that introduced terms like “person who produces sperm” into the classroom is now telling the general public to stop referring to their children as sons and daughters. “The language we use matters!” the Vermont Department of Health declared Wednesday in a social media post titled “Inclusive Language for Families”:“The language we use matters! Many families and students are getting ready for the new school year. Equity in the classroom is an essential piece of a productive and healthy learning environment.“When talking about family, it's important to use terms that cover the many versions of what family can...

Last fall, having drunk deeply of the Left’s cocktail of antisemitism, post-colonialism, and general nuisance-making, a small but virulent minority of American college students began “protesting” for “Palestine.” Inaugurated mere days after Hamas’s Oct. 7 sneak-attack against Israel, these agitations crescendoed with the establishment, in the spring of this year, of “Occupy Wall Street”-style encampments on university quads. Four months later, a new school year is upon us, and Israel’s war marches on. It is worth reflecting on what we learned from the ordeal, as well as what administrators and reformers ought to do if and when student activists resume...

As Minnesota Governor Tim Walz vies for the U.S. vice presidency, new details are surfacing about his teaching career, including the impact he made as faculty advisor for a high school Gay-Straight Alliance club. However, sources say the Walz family were LGBTQ+ community boosters even before then, as especially evidenced by one extracurricular Indigo Girls concert where the Walzes taught in Nebraska. ,,, Jacob Reitan — a former student of both Walz and his wife Gwen Walz (nee Whipple), both teachers at Mankato West High School in the 1990s — described feeling stunned when Ms. Walz announced her husband would...

In the good old days of American education, professors could speak their minds freely. Disagreements would often result, with others disputing the case that the speaker had made. The solid consensus, however, was that academic freedom must never be curtailed, since intellectual progress depends on the exchange of ideas, just as John Stuart Mill had argued in On Liberty. Perhaps the most disturbing trend in our colleges and universities today is the erosion of support for free speech. Professors who now take controversial positions have to worry about more than mere disagreement; they have to worry about punishment for having...

Congress Trading Dashboard The Stock Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act requires U.S. Senators and U.S. Representatives to publicly file and disclose any financial transaction within 45 days of its occurrence. We download those disclosures, parse them for stock trades, fetch the stock's performance in the time following the transaction, and calculate each politician's cumulative return from their trades. Check Your Congress-Critters trades!...............

By now, the diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) industry’s capture of academia, business, and government is obvious to most Americans. From former Harvard president Claudine Gay’s televised equivocations before Congress to the unhinged, violent student and faculty occupations in support of Hamas at some of America’s most elite universities, many are no doubt wondering if DEI is producing something counter to its placid-sounding words. That this shameful behavior is occurring at civilian institutions of higher learning is probably no surprise to most observers. Unfortunately, DEI has metastasized beyond the confines of the civilian world and found a willing host in...

On Tuesday, August 6, the Russo-Ukrainian War took an unexpected twist with the beginning of a brigade-level Ukrainian assault on Kursk Oblast, across the border from Ukrainian Sumy. The decision by Ukrainian command to willingly open up a new front, at a time when their defenses on critical axes of the Donbas are failing, is both aggressive and fraught with peril. The sensational spectacle of a Ukrainian offensive into prewar Russia in a region that is operationally remote from the critical theater of the war has whipped the peanut gallery into a frenzy, and most commentators and observers seem to...

Young Democratic Socialists of America chapters are slated to host stay-at-home strikes to “weaponize” students against their institutions.Over 100 Young Democratic Socialists of America (YDSA) university chapters are invited to participate in a “National Student Strike for Palestine,” urging universities to divest from Israel, by staying home and skipping class.“We need disruption—and a strike does just that. When students refuse to go to class, the university cannot function,” said a YDSA organizer, as reported by The Free Press.Throughout the previous academic year, hundreds of pro-Hamas protests, which YDSA calls “a beautiful show of organizing energy”, took place across America’s campuses....

In 2019, the four-year graduation rate of all University of California (UC) undergraduates was 72.9 percent, while that of black UC students lagged behind at 59.9 percent. This disparity was emblematic of broader imbalances in college preparedness: In 2019, 74 percent of Asian Americans, 53.8 percent of whites, 36.1 percent of Latinos, 25.9 percent of American Indians, and 23.7 percent of blacks in California were prepared for college or professional careers according to the state’s “college and career indicator” factors. This unfortunate deficit was a result of persistent achievement gaps at the K-12 level. A CalMatters analysis in 2020 revealed...

In a recent Boston Globe column, correspondent Kara Miller wrote that our colleges and universities now “embrac[e] the status quo,” preventing them from responding to new challenges. Her article draws heavily on a 2023 book by Brian Rosenberg, former president of Macalester College, entitled Whatever It Is, I’m Against It: Resistance to Change in Higher Education. Both Miller and Rosenberg write of the difficulty of fostering meaningful change in our colleges and universities. Private businesses in the United States demonstrating such inflexibility would quickly endanger their viability and existence. In today’s world, the intransigence of our institutions of higher education...

The Coalition for Carolina recently noted that UNC-Chapel Hill has dropped out of the top-10 “average adjusted faculty salary” rankings for the 2023-24 academic year, as measured against a select group of peer institutions. The implication from the announcement is that this is a bad thing. “We should demand to see our faculty in the top 10 in salaries, respect and shared governance,” the progressive organization declared. “It is concerning, because the quality of our faculty determines the quality of the University and the quality of education that students receive.” Complaints about faculty salaries from within the academy often imply...