Free Republic

FPIW visited the campus of the University of Washington to see if students would affirm or reject Joseph Backholm's new chosen identity: a 6'5" Chinese woman... (And Backholm asks repeatedly if they would accept him as 7-year-old, too.)

Image from campusreform.org Universities are developing a deserved reputation for places that act as little fascist states, only allowing speech that the University Administration agrees with, or is considered "politically correct".  The University of Alabama has lived up to the reputation by citing a student who was peacefully wearing an empty holster in a protest over the Universitity's no weapon policy.  The campus police explicitly say that they are citing the student because "someone called it in".  The campus policy does not prohibit holsters.  The citation is for "Engaging in activities that threaten the safety of the campus community"...

Some Of My Friends Think That Being A Socialist Is About Being NiceDo you have a friend who claims to be a socialist? In the 20th century there have been numerous political systems, but in the latter half of the century there were only two survivors, Socialism and Capitalism. So we have at this time in the Western world, which for all practical purposes controls the world, two opposing political systems. (I have already previously stated that there is no basic difference between socialists and communists. There are, however, some very important factors relating to socialism of which you should...

From Occupy Wall Street to the Bernie Sanders campaign, Americans have embraced recent efforts to shed light on economic inequality. However, the success of economic reform lies in the hands of our generation, a generation CBS News referred to as “narcissistic praise hounds.” To millennials, the threat of terrorism always existed, the Internet always accompanied a research paper, and the Cold War was taught in history class, not lived. We are a generation ‘with the world at our fingertips,’ a generation that religiously watches “Friends” and uses social media multiple times a day. But, do we have access to the...

Typical leftists–they want free stuff, but they don’t want to pay for it. In a poll conducted by Vox and Morning Consult during the first week in April, they found that supporters for Sen. Bernie Sanders unsurprisingly have strong support for things like free college tuition and universal health care. They register at 70+ percent in favor for both initiatives. Then, the question turns to how much are they willing to pay for Sanders' agenda. This is where support dips dramatically, especially when two in three Bernie-ites don’t want to pay more than $1,000 for a single-payer health care system....

A professional education consultant and teacher trainer argued at the White Privilege Conference (WPC) in Philadelphia that great teachers must also be liberal activists, and described in detail her goal for destroying the “white supremacist” nature of modern education. SNIP In Hackman’s telling, virtually everything associated with being a good student in modern education is actually just a tool of racist white supremacy. “The racial narrative of White tends to be like this: Rugged individual, honest, hard-working, disciplined, rigorous, successful,” she said. “And so then, the narrative of U.S. public education: Individual assessments, competition, outcome over process (I care more...

Illinois' public school districts are roughly $20 billion in debt, a staggering figure fueled in part by decades of special deals in Springfield that have given districts exemptions so they can keep borrowing beyond limits set by law. Today, that debt exceeds long-term school borrowing in most other states. It equates to about $10,000 for every Pre-K to 12th-grade public school student in Illinois... All the borrowing is a drain on taxpayers who have to repay the debt, as well as school budgets that must steer billions of dollars annually to principal and interest payments — money that could be...

People do not want to attend college where thuggery and outright bigotry is not only condoned, but supported. The University of Missouri (Mizzou) was ground zero for Black Lives Matter’s academic crusade and now the university is paying the price for enabling the black supremacist movement. For months, racial tensions remained incredibly high and protests were encouraged as university officials cowardly caved to any demands in an effort to avoid being called a racist. Those who crusaded for supposed social justice went so far as to demand segregation for whites by demanding the creation of a “black-only healing space” where...

NASHVILLE — Dozens of undocumented immigrant students from Chattanooga and other parts of Tennessee rallied Tuesday at the state Legislature and spoke with House members in hopes of reviving stalled legislation that would let them pay in-state tuition rates to attend public colleges and universities. The bill failed last year in the House by a single vote after passing the Senate overwhelmingly. . . . Sen. Todd Gardenhire, R-Chattanooga, who sponsored the Senate bill and passed it overwhelmingly last year, said, "I'm hoping they bring it out. Let's have a vote one way or the other." Earlier this year, Gardenhire...

At the last minute, officials at the State University of New York at New Paltz curtly canceled a planned campus debate between a notable left-wing media critic and a notable right-wing media critic because the right-wing media critic has right-wing views. . . . School officials had blasted out emails promoting the event as late as March 28. Then, on the afternoon of March 30, SUNY New Paltz student activities director Mike Patterson declared that the debate would not occur. "The intended purpose for our community would likely not be achieved," Patterson explained, according to The New Paltz Oracle, the...

At the last minute, officials at the State University of New York at New Paltz curtly canceled a planned campus debate between a notable left-wing media critic and a notable right-wing media critic because the right-wing media critic has right-wing views. The last-minute cancellation of the debate between Jeff Cohen of Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting and Cliff Kincaid of Accuracy in Media occurred on March 30, the day it was scheduled, reports Campus Reform.

Haruka Weiser was lovely and full of promise – a dance major in her freshman year with a full scholarship at the University of Texas in Austin. She had planned to declare a second major in pre-med. Her brutal murder nearly two weeks ago, in the heart of the idyllic campus, happened during an utterly routine part of her day: She was walking to her dorm room from the drama building at 9:30 p.m. -- using a well-traveled sidewalk dimly illuminated with street lights. She was part of the wardrobe crew for an upcoming production. Weiser's murder has shocked and...

DePaul University students, don't fear! There will be no more political "chalking" at your school. Apparently, someone wrote - with chalk - on a campus sidewalk last week: "Make DePaul Great Again." The message sent students and staff into a tailspin. The xenophobia! The bigotry! The racism! "While these chalk messages are part of national agendas in a heated political battle, they appeared on campus at a time of significant racial tension in our country and on college campuses. DePaul is no exception," DePaul's vice president for student affairs Eugene Zdziarski wrote in a campus-wide email obtained by Campus Reform....

Parents of fourth-graders at an Oregon elementary school were 'furious' to discover that their children - some as young as nine - had read an explicit sex education book featuring cartoons of sex acts and masturbation, Fox 12 Oregon reported Thursday. In a letter to parents, Hudson Park Elementary School admitted that copies of 'It's Perfectly Normal,' a guide to sexual health aimed at children ten and up, were passed around to students. . . . The book is aimed at children aged 10 and up, and features cartoon depictions of male and female teens and adults. Acts featured in...

A new study released Tuesday found that Pakistan’s public school textbooks negatively portray the country’s religious minorities, including Hindus, Christians and Ahmadis, as “untrustworthy, religiously inferior, and ideologically scheming.” […] The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) sponsored the study, which was conducted by the Pakistan-based NGO Peace and Education Foundation (PEF). The study found 70 new instances of bias in addition to finding that some problematic content found in a 2011 study conducted by USCIRF had remained and even been expanded upon. “Pakistan’s public school textbooks contain deeply troubling content that portrays non-Muslim citizens as outsiders, unpatriotic, and...

A Tulane University fraternity has caused an uproar this week after building a wall made of sandbags with the message 'Make America Great Again and 'Trump' plastered across it. Photos of the wall circulated on social media after it was erected on April 7 on the off-campus house of the university's chapter of Kappa Alpha Order.

Perhaps campus administrators are starting to learn their lesson. From Ohio State University comes the video of the day — an “actual grownup” (to borrow Ed Driscoll’s words) ordering campus protesters to end their unlawful “occupation” of the university’s administration building: The protesters demands included the usual (and hilarious) potpourri of campus nonsense. Divest from this, invest in that, and stop all the oppression. This time, however, the administration was in no mood to negotiate. Debra Heine has the details: Ohio State Vice President Jay Kasey paid the protesters a visit shortly after the occupation began, with a message from...

There’s a religious liberty standoff underway in Middleton, Wisconsin. ADVERTISEMENT On one side is a group of Christian moms armed with Chick-fil-A sandwiches and 400 homemade brownies. On the other side are public school administrators who believe that Jesus and plump juicy chicken breasts are “divisive.” The controversy surrounds an off-campus lunch event involving students at Middleton High School known as “Jesus Lunch.”

Ohio State Vice President Jay Kasey paid the protesters a visit shortly after the occupation began, with a message from the president. "Dr. Drake will never receive a list of demands and he will not negotiate with you," Kasey calmly informed the group before moving on to the next part of his conversation, which included the university's own list of demands. "If you refuse to leave, then you will be charged with a student code of conduct violation," Kasey said. "If you are here at 5:00 a.m. we will clear the building and you will be arrested." He added, "We...

The Heritage Foundation published a special report with essays from several education experts, detailing the background and the effects of Common Core. Stanley Kurtz, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, and William Estrada, director of federal relations at the Home School Legal Defense Association, highlighted the problems with Common Core. Estrada wrote, "Common Core is good for homeschooling.” He pointed out in 2009, there were 850,000 homeschooled students in the U.S. By 2012, the Department of Education found that there were 1.8 million homeschooled students. As you can see, the growth in homeschooling tracks nicely with...