Free Republic

A story in Inside Higher Ed last week revealed that two more Ivy League schools, Cornell and the University of Pennsylvania, have stopped publishing “dean’s lists” that recognize high levels of academic achievement. As one anonymous Penn alumnus put it, “The war against individual achievement continues unabated.” Other Ivies (e.g., Brown and Harvard) had already abandoned—or never really embraced—the concept of recognizing merit in this manner. These latest moves are still another sign that much of higher education is contemptuous of the values that produced American exceptionalism, among them appropriately and generously rewarded hard work. To some, it is not...

Liberals really are extremely fragile people. This helps explain why they need “safe spaces” with cuddly stuffed animals, grief counselors, and warning labels against “microaggressions.”The latest evidence is a completely unironic and totally un-self-aware piece in the New York Times about the anguish of liberal law professors having to teach constitutional law at a time when the Supreme Court leans right. It’s so upsetting that some professors are moved to tears and can’t conceive of continuing. The New York Times thinks this is actually “a crisis.”Seriously, you can’t make this up:Rebecca Brown, at the University of Southern California, has been...

If I, a graduating senior, were to give one piece of advice to an incoming UNC student, it would be to research prospective classes diligently. Search online for syllabi, survey professors’ CVs and academic work, and read students’ course reviews. Far too often, one signs up for a class simply because it fulfills a general-education or major requirement, only to spend a semester subjected to a shallow display of advocacy and a denigration of what once provided the basis for a rigorous liberal education. Unfortunately, the number of truly rigorous and enlightening courses available to UNC students continues to dwindle....

During a Feb. 9 home game, every member of the Ragin’ Cajuns softball team stood to honor their country as the national anthem was played. Most of Cal’s players also stood to honor their country, but six of them took a knee. The action didn’t go over so well in the South. (Snip) Eventually, the shouting became so widespread that most of the verbal grief the Cal ladies were receiving was could not be made out.But the booing was heard loud and clear. It appeared as if all or most of those in attendance eventually realized what was happening and...

“The empires of the future are the empires of the mind,” said Winston Churchill. And judging by the state of education in America, it seems both of those empires could soon crumble. The dysfunction is evident from top to bottom: from Ivy League outposts down to the secondary schools. Both are producing a generation that is ill-informed, illiterate and innumerate. In other words, a generation increasingly ill-suited to function as productive citizens in a democracy. One might expect, then, that the creation of a raft of new universities and schools focused on doing something different would seem like a fundamental...

Inputs are out, and outcomes are in. So goes the current thinking about the methodology used to create college rankings. The publications that tell us which colleges are best, next best, and on down the line often revamp their formulas, and the emphasis has moved in recent years to evaluating institutions by the status of their students after graduation rather than their status—and institutional conditions—when they enter. The industry’s behemoth, U.S. News, responded to ongoing criticism by touting, about this year’s best-colleges list, “We want to ensure the educational resources we provide emphasize the outcomes for graduates … This, in...

Despite a Supreme Court decision declaring that a president lacks the authority to unilaterally forgive student debt, a chipper Biden boasted "the Court can't stop me. I sign the papers and $138 billion in debts don't have to be repaid. It's as simple as that. Judges have no troops or police officers to arrest me. Democrats in Congress will prevent the Republicans from impeaching me." Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre explained that "sterile adherence to out-dated notions of a balance of power between the three branches of government must not be allowed to thwart the President from ending the suffering of...

Editor’s Commentary: While corporate media and local authorities do their best to downplay the immigration status of suspected murderer Jose Antonio Ibarra, it seems crystal clear that he’s an illegal alien. He’s allegedly from Venezuela and is not a U.S. citizen. Fox News, to their credit, did at least highlight that Ibarra is not a U.S. citizen. Other news networks danced around and often never mentioned that part at all. This story has been in the national news spotlight since it broke Thursday. Let’s see how fast the coverage disappears now that it’s an illegal alien in custody. Here are...

The rise of political orthodoxy on campus is often cited as one of the key reasons for reforming universities. But if there is a rise of orthodoxy, what does this orthodoxy look like, who is perpetuating it, and on what grounds are they doing so? Professors might immediately want me to point out that universities are known for being open environments of intellectual, academic, and expressive freedom, which support their core mission to create and disseminate knowledge. They might also wish to take issue with the idea that faculty members push an orthodoxy, as it’s common for students (or students’...

The Biden-Harris regime, consistent with its record of daily lawbreaking, has just illegally canceled another $1.2 billion in student loan debt owed by about 150,000 borrowers whose individual loans were about $12,000 each. This is just the latest, on top of three years of other incremental student loan cancellations, totaling about $138 billion in unpaid student loan debt so far, owed by almost four million voters, some of which is still tied up in court, but the regime’s actions have severely jeopardized the government’s ability to ever collect, even if these illegal acts are properly overturned. In some states where...

Biden Says Bailing Out Student Debt Is "Also Helping You Who Don't Go To College." (36 seconds video in the link below) https://twitter.com/Jules31415/status/1760427842821603631

A very long essay, but crucial to understanding where we are. One would think that by now all these anti-woke conservatives and moderate liberals would have learned at least some of the bitter lessons from the last decade about how political power and cultural change actually work, but I guess not. … They could have recognized by now that this is not a simple political issue with a political solution, but they have not…. No, the Revolution is far from over. [Here are] twenty reasons to get woke and despair. 1. One does not simply walk away from religious beliefs....

In June 2023, Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. (SFFA) prevailed in complaints alleging racially discriminatory admissions practices at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina. The 6-3 Supreme Court decision in these cases eliminated decades of ambiguity about what aspects of race were permissible in candidate evaluations at some of our nation’s most prestigious universities. Following the Court’s decision, a number of analysts and commentators noted that Chief Justice Roberts’s majority opinion contained a footnote exempting military service academies. That footnote reads: The United States as amicus curiae contends that race-based admissions programs further compelling interests at our Nation’s...

Although the Ivies and other elite colleges and universities in the U.S. are financial titans, they are registered with the Internal Revenue Service as 501(c)(3) charitable nonprofit organizations. As a result, their vast property holdings are exempt from taxation in all 50 states. The rationale for this status is that higher education is an inherent public good. At least that has been the assumption under which this country has long operated. But this argument has increasingly been called into question by events over the last few years, culminating in the headline-making responses by university presidents to a recent congressional panel....

Joe Biden is in trouble with black voters as the 2024 election goes into full swing. So his campaign thought it would be a great idea to post a video of Biden buying fried chicken for black kids. As TGP’s Kristinn Taylor reported, a poll recently released by ABC News and the Washington Post has Trump leading Joe Biden in a 2024 rematch, 52 percent to 42 percent among registered voters. 74% of Americans say the economy is poor. Americans are rejecting the propaganda promoting Joe Biden’s economic agenda dubbed “Bidenomics.” The economy sucks. Inflation is still high, groceries prices...

The UNC chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) doesn’t have a great track record on free speech and civil discourse. Its members have occupied university administrative buildings, attempted to shout down speakers, and used intimidation tactics on Jewish students. So it’s unsurprising that SJP shows equal disdain for the university’s commitment to institutional neutrality. The Chapel Hill student organization has shared a list of “demands” for university action in an online petition and in a letter to UNC administration. The list of demands, if met, would be the equivalent of UNC taking sides in the Israel-Hamas conflict.

Fueled by political ambition and a distaste for the new left-wing ideological agendas that have taken root on many college campuses, activists and politicians have sought to alter the landscape of higher education in Florida. In many respects, they have succeeded. These reformers have focused much attention on New College of Florida, a public liberal-arts college in Sarasota that had a well-deserved reputation as a breeding ground of progressivism. The school’s extremism sparked the ire of Florida governor Ron DeSantis, who often says that “Florida is where woke goes to die.” According to DeSantis’s chief of staff, James Uthmeier, “It...

The American economy can’t catch a break. In addition to the massive price inflation of food, cars, housing, energy, and so many other elements, international companies are now suffering from a near-doubling of ocean transportation costs in just the past three months, due to simultaneous crises in Central America and the Red Sea that have restricted international shipping through the Panama and Suez Canals. This is adding to the cost of goods all over the world, along with damaging lead times, as longer transits cause disruptions to both factory schedules and retail offerings. For thousands of years, ocean carriers moved...

A group of Black men left MSNBC stunned on Friday after they explained why former President Trump appeals to them over President Joe Biden. MSNBC correspondent Trymaine Lee met with the voters at a barbershop in Charleston, South Carolina, asking them what “appeal” Trump has among their demographic over Biden. “Money,” they said. “Donald Trump has a reputation of being the money man,” voter Anthony Freeman said. “I just think that Donald Trump, in spite of all the craziness he may have in his head, reading some of the things that he talks about what business I can kind of...

Among the many destructive ideas that “progressive” thinking has unleashed on education in America is that it’s unfair to hold students from “underrepresented groups” to the same standards as others. Schools and colleges should “help” minority students succeed by lowering expectations for them—somehow atoning for wrongs done to their ancestors in the distant past. That is how Claudine Gay wound up as president of Harvard. The notion that academic standards should be lower for minority students has swept through our educational institutions, but there are some dissenters who argue that this doesn’t help but hurts. One of them is Professor...