Free Republic

Harvard University is retiring the official shield of its law school following complaints over its ties to an 18th-century slaveholder. […] The shield was approved in 1937 and depicts three bundles of wheat. It’s modeled after the family crest of slaveholder Isaac Royall Jr., who donated his estate to create the first law professorship at Harvard. Royall inherited his estate and many slaves from his father, a slaveholder who was known for his cruelty. …

Harvard Law School has been roiled this academic year by allegations of racism–allegations that the school’s Dean, Martha Minow, has stipulated to be true, saying that racism is a “serious problem” at the law school. She doesn’t mean it, of course. Otherwise, someone might ask why she has failed to do something about the problem since becoming dean in 2009. Protesters at the law school have focused on the school’s crest, which borrows from a bookplate that was used by one Isaac Royall, a slaveholder who donated (or whose son donated) land that provided early funding for the school:

Beset by scandals on both the national and statewide level, Democrats find themselves in danger of historic losses in the 2014 midterms, as in addition to the "angry white males" they find themselves facing a new threat, that of the "angry young black male." A growing trend of young black makes defecting to the GOP has caused fears among Democratic Party officials who have largely ignored the concerns of a constituency that has been loyal for decades. It is ironic that with the election of the first African-American President, the party that garners roughly 90% of the black vote finds...

National Public Radio collaborated with Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to survey Americans’ recent experience with health care. As to the Affordable Care Act, the survey’s findings are damning. They suggest that Obamacare has been worse than a complete waste of money. This is the survey’s only question directly on Obamacare. Most respondents say that Obamacare hasn’t affected them; where it has affected them, most say the law’s impact has been harmful: The promises that President Obama made about the ACA–cheaper premiums! lower co-pays and deductibles! better coverage!–have completely failed to materialize....

Journalists from The Associated Press who uncovered extensive slave labor in the Thai seafood industry won an investigative reporting prize from Harvard University's Shorenstein Center. The media and public policy research center bestowed the $25,000 Goldsmith Prize to Margie Mason, Robin McDowell, Martha Mendoza and Esther Htusan this week for their work on "Seafood from Slaves." [...] The finalists for the prize included the Guardian, The New York Times, the Tampa Bay Times, The Washington Post and InsideClimate News. ...

How panicked should we be about the rise of Donald Trump? A professor at Harvard, Danielle Allen, recently published a widely shared op-ed piece in the Washington Post likening his rise to that of Hitler... ...such Hitler hype has happened before, and been unwarranted. Steven Hayward, author of “The Age of Reagan,” recalls the rhetoric: Democratic Rep. William Clay of Missouri charged that Reagan was “trying to replace the Bill of Rights with fascist precepts lifted verbatim from Mein Kampf.”

Harvard University in the US is going to remove the word "master" from academic titles, after protests from students who claimed the title had echoes of slavery. House masters, in charge of residential halls at the university, will become known as "faculty deans". Harvard Law School is also deciding whether to change its official seal, because of links to slavery.

An international law firm has ceased their sponsorship of student activities at Harvard Law School following an incident in which some of the money it donated for the students was used to pay for an pro-Palestinian event by a student group on campus. The student group "Justice for Palestine" had used $500 from the fund to pay for pizza for students who participated in a "pro-Palestine" discussion that took place in the fall of 2015. Soon after, students were told by the University that the fund was no longer available for their use. The Toronto Star reported that the firm,...

An international law firm won't sponsor student activities at Harvard anymore after its money was used to pay for an event on Palestine.

A group of Harvard Law students have occupied one of the school’s halls, saying there is no space for marginalized students and staff on campus. The occupation, which began Monday night, is an effort to create such an environment, according to a statement from the students. The group, which calls itself Reclaim Harvard Law, took to the lounge in Wasserstein Hall around 8 p.m., renaming the spot “Belinda Hall”—a nod to a former slave of the law school’s donors. Around 20 students spent the night in the lounge Monday after toting along air mattresses, blankets, and suitcases, The Crimson reported....

This is a two-year old story about Ted Cruz at Harvard Law School.   My hat goes off to 2ndDivisionVet who posted this a long time ago. It's an well-written, objective, interesting, and candid portrayal of Cruz from the perspective of his professors and former classmates. This is not a click bait article. No offensive videos and advertisements or long Javascripts. So it's a clean read and I think excerpting it will lose the power of this well-written piece. I will tease you a bit about the contents. It includes details on: How Cruz decorated his dormitory room. His battles...

As you no doubt have already heard, on Friday the Heritage Foundation accepted the resignation of one Jason Richwine, who in 2009 had completed a Harvard dissertation in which he probed the nexus between immigration and IQ. The decision revealed a shocking unwillingness on the part of Heritage to stand up to bullying and protect the academic freedom of its researchers. Perhaps the only good thing to emerge from all this has been the wide-scale distribution of the dissertation itself, a worthy if highly debatable document. It’s a pity that none of Richwine’s detractors seem to have seriously engaged the...

The Cambridge City Council again did not vote on a resolution last Monday to rename Columbus Day as Indigenous Peoples’ Day for the third time this year. Despite what the resolution’s proponents claim is strong public support, the legislation is on hold while councillors negotiate how best to change the holiday name and still honor Italian Americans, many of whom see the day as a celebration of their heritage. Councillor Nadeem A. Mazen, who is leading the charge for the name change, said he anticipates the process will continue to play out over the next few months while councillors try...

The last Republican president and his Democratic successor both graduated from schools within Harvard University and that should probably be a literal red flag. "Understanding Harvard Law School is very important to understanding our president, Barack Obama," Texas attorney Ted Cruz said in an interview with scholar Marvin Olasky that appeared in the November 7, 2009 issue of World magazine. "He is very much a creature of Harvard Law." "To understand what that means you have to understand that there were more self-declared communists on the Harvard faculty that there were Republicans," Cruz avers. "Every single idea this president has...

A shoplifting suspect is in custody after allegedly stealing an unoccupied Springettsbury Township police car on Monday, according to township police. Marlo Harvard Jr., 21, Baltimore, is charged with theft by unlawful taking of a motor vehicle, theft by unlawful taking of a firearm, retail theft, resisting arrest, fleeing and eluding police, as well as summary traffic offenses, according to a press release.

Thursday following FBN's broadcast of the Republican presidential debate, Harvard constitutional law professor Laurence Tribe attacked Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) 97%, one of the participants in last night debate, for his stated on reasoning for his eligibility to run for president of the United States. According to Tribe, Cruz applies a double standard to his interpretation of the Constitution, to which he deemed Cruz to be a "constitutional opportunist" and a "hypocrite." "I've done a lot of historical research on it, and so have a lot of other people, and the best evidence seems to be that what they meant...

I had to cringe during a particularly elitist remark that left Obama's mouth during his rteary town-hall on gun control; "I believe in the Second Amendment. It is there, written on the paper. It guarantees a right to bear arms. No matter how many times people try to twist my words around -- I taught constitutional law, I know a little bit about this -- I get it." Well, a colleague of Obama's at the University of Chicago, economist John Lott quoted Obama as having told him that he doesn't believe that people should be able to own guns when...

People size you up in seconds, but what exactly are they evaluating? Harvard Business School professor Amy Cuddy has been studying first impressions alongside fellow psychologists Susan Fiske and Peter Glick for more than 15 years, and has discovered patterns in these interactions. In her new book, "Presence," Cuddy says people quickly answer two questions when they first meet you: Can I trust this person? Can I respect this person? Psychologists refer to these dimensions as warmth and competence respectively, and ideally you want to be perceived as having both. Interestingly, Cuddy says that most people, especially in a professional...

Thursday on MSNBC following FBN's broadcast of the Republican presidential debate, Harvard constitutional law professor Laurence Tribe attacked Sen. Ted Cruz , one of the participants in last night debate, for his stated on reasoning for his eligibility to run for president of the United States. According to Tribe, Cruz applies a double standard to his interpretation of the Constitution, to which he deemed Cruz to be a "constitutional opportunist" and a "hypocrite." "I've done a lot of historical research on it, and so have a lot of other people, and the best evidence seems to be that what they...

A newly formed group, the Students for Fair Representation, has filed suit challenging racial and other affirmative action preferences at Harvard and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The lawsuits are brought by the same law firm that represented Fisher in Fisher v. Texas, in which the Supreme Court ruled that affirmative action plans were subject to strict scrutiny in applying the Equal Protection Clause: The parties asked the Court to review whether the judgment below was consistent with “this Court’s decisions interpreting the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, including Grutter v. Bollinger, 539 U. S....