Free Republic

Dartmouth College has a problem. Protestors occupied the president's office at the Ivy League school a couple of weeks ago and demanded more "womyn or people of color" faculty, coverage of sex-change operations on the student health plan, and "gender-neutral bathrooms," among other things. Now Dartmouth President Philip J. Hanlon has responded with a call "to end the extreme behaviors that are in conflict with our mission." But Hanlon's aim seems focused almost exclusively on the campus fraternity system, and his solution -- a committee to look into "high-risk drinking, sexual assault and inclusivity" -- appears more a way to...

After the Civil War, Robert E. Lee accepted a position as president of what was then called Washington College. By all accounts, he served the school well and had a nice end of life. After his death, Washington College was renamed Washington & Lee. Today, many black people attend the university that bears Marse Robert’s surname, so I guess we won. But a group of black law students at Washington & Lee Law School is getting really sick of the university’s consistent, stars-and-bars waving support of Lee’s legacy and the whitewashing (no pun intended) of what that legacy represents. They’ve...

Western Washington University sent a questionnaire to students asking them for advice on how the administration could succeed at making sure that in future years, “we are not as white as we are today.” The question notes that WWU’s racial make up does not perfectly reflect the nation at large, and asks students to consider strategies that other universities have used to focus on skin color as the paramount indicator of a student-applicant’s worth. The president of WWU has stated that his explicit goal is to reduce the white population on campus, according to Campus Reform. “I’ve said before and...

Despite the controversy and complaints, Texas A&M is holding separate and special graduation ceremonies for LGBT students Wednesday evening. The "Lavender Graduation," as it's being called, will feature as its commencement speaker Phyllis Frye – the first transgender judge in the state and a Texas A&M alumna. Supporters haven't specifically stated the reason for the special ceremony, except that "new leadership" in the pro-LGBT resource center on campus [link caution] is making it possible this year – and that it is to "celebrate the accomplishments of graduating lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex and ally [LGBTQQIAA] students." Regardless of the...

- WWU's marketing department asks "How do we make sure that in future years 'we are not as white as we are today?'" - This question has been posed several times already by University President Bruce Shepard. - President Shepard equates a "white" student body and faculty to "failure."

The Islamists have a lot in common with the militant homosexual activists in their aggressive efforts to silence critics who tell the truth about their bad behavior and sinister agenda. Yet another glaring example has emerged. On Thursday, the Thomas More Law Center reported on the shameful capitulation of Boston-area Brandeis University to the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a group associated with the Muslim Brotherhood. CAIR demanded that Brandeis withdraw the offer of an honorary degree to a prominent critic of Islam, Ayaan Hirsi Ali. In a slanderous, bullying open letter to Brandeis University, CAIR launched a personal attack...

The latest in a string of successful court challenges to college “free speech zones” is unfolding in Virginia, where lawyers are negotiating a settlement in the case of a student who was barred from preaching on campus. The Virginia Community College System has agreed to suspend its student demonstrations policy in response to a lawsuit filed by Thomas Nelson Community College student Christian Parks. Both sides have asked a federal judge in Norfolk to put the case on hold until May 2 while a new policy and settlement details are negotiated. Judicial history and recent legislative developments suggested Parks had...

Former Muslim and human rights activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali has issued a statement in response to the action by Brandeis University in withdrawing an honorary degree they were going to present to her at the 2014 commencement ceremony. Ali called out the school's administration who would "so deeply betray its own founding principles."

Conservative colleges provide an important counterbalance to the progressivism and liberalism that pervade so much of American higher education. For students raised with traditional moral values, who favor limited government, who adhere to free-market economic principles, entering the world of higher education is too often an alienating experience. For conservative students, it can be a challenge to find a college or university that embraces—or even tolerates—conservative values in its curriculum and student life. This ranking of the best conservative colleges in America helps conservative students and parents to find a school in keeping with their conservative values and commitments.Ranking Guidelines...

First Amendment enthusiasts are thrilled that Mike Adams, a criminology professor at the University of North Carolina-Wilmington, won his lawsuit against administrators who denied him a promotion because of his conservative, Christian views. Adams joined the university in 1993. He was an atheist at the time. By the year 2000, he had converted to Christianity and become an outspoken political conservative. He eventually wrote columns for Townhall.com. In 2006, he was denied a promotion. Administrators were retaliating against him for his conservative views, he claimed. The jury agreed. Adams’s lawyers said the victory is an important one for free speech...

Today, as most of you sit in your offices pretending to work while reading my column (thanks, by the way) I'll be taking the stand in federal court in a First Amendment lawsuit against my employer, UNC-Wilmington. The trial will be over in three days, thus ending a seven-year legal battle with important implications for academic freedom. Some have asked how the outcome of the trial will affect my work in the campus free speech movement. I'm writing this column in response to those inquiries. There are three possible outcomes to the trial this week in Greenville, NC. We could...

SACRAMENTO -- A legislative push to permit California's public universities to once again consider race and ethnicity in admissions appears to be on life support after an intense backlash from Asian-American parents who fear it will make it harder for their children to get into good schools. :snip: A planned referendum sailed through the state Senate in January without fanfare on a party-line vote, but three Asian-American Democrats who initially backed the measure are now calling for it to be "tabled" before the state Assembly has a chance to vote on it -- a highly unusual move. And it seems...

Big name Republicans and putative conservatives signing onto the Obama Administration’s Common Core education reforms in the belief that they will raise standards in public schools may want to entertain the possibility that they will actually lower them. Stan Karp writes in Rethinking Schools that “For many teachers, especially in the interim between the rollout of the standards and the arrival of the tests—a lot of Common Core’s appeal is based on claims that: “It represents a tighter set of smarter standards focused on developing critical learning skills instead of mastering fragmented bits of knowledge; “It requires more progressive, student-centered...

The Obama Administration’s former Homeland Security Chief has taken over the University of California. “Janet Napolitano had zero experience leading a college before she became president of the University of California last year,” Eric Kelderman wrote in The Chonicle of Higher Education on February 21, 2014. “Yet after just four months on the job, Ms. Napolitano, 56, has outlined major goals for the system, including a reconsideration of tuition policies, improving cooperation with the other two higher-education systems in the state, ensuring the prominent role of research and graduate education, and making the campuses carbon-neutral by 2025.” “She even has...

The U. S. Department of Education wants for-profit colleges to prove that their graduates are gainfully employed. For their part, the for-profits claim that their non-profit counterparts would fail such a test. Specifically, the Association of Private Sector Colleges & Universities (APSCU) names four which it predicts would fail: George Washington University; Lutheran Theological Seminary at Gettysburg; The University of Michigan; and Virginia Commonwealth University. “The Department is proposing minimum standards to help ensure that these programs prepare students for employment and have earnings sufficient to repay their student loan debt,” the Department of Education explains. “These proposed regulations are...

A Stanford University law professor took the view that the Second Amendment permits strong gun control, telling the crowd that “restriction has to be at the core” of the right to carry a gun. John J. Donohue, a member of the Stanford Law School faculty, made his remarks during a debate with attorney Donald Kilmer, an adjunct professor at Lincoln Law School of San Jose. “I support the right to self-defense,” said Donohue during the debate, according to The Stanford Review. “But that doesn’t mean that you have a right to high-capacity magazines.”

In a powerful statement encouraging fidelity and strong Catholic identity in Catholic higher education, Pope Francis today urged the University of Notre Dame to be an “uncompromising witness… to the Church’s moral teaching” and to resist “efforts, from whatever quarter, to dilute that indispensable witness,” according to a translation by Vatican Radio.

Madison Holleran, 19, was stressed about her 3.5 GPA in the weeks before she jumped from a parking garage in Philadelphia on Friday, the friend said. The freshman’s tragic death stunned friends and family in her hometown of Allendale, N.J.A beautiful and brainy University of Pennsylvania track star jumped to her death from a parking garage Friday after stressing out over grades, a family friend revealed Monday. Madison Holleran — a freshman at the Ivy League school who hails from Bergen County, N.J.— made dinner plans and sent messages to friends without a hint she was feeling suicidal, said family...

The high-profile bullying case of a black student has thrust San Jose State under an intense spotlight to improve the college experience for its minority students and diversify its predominately white faculty. But an analysis of demographic figures by this newspaper shows that a lack of racial diversity in academia runs wide and deep: The South Bay campus' faculty is more diverse than other major Bay Area universities and the state's two university systems. At San Jose State, 59 percent of the faculty are listed as white, although 10 percent of the professors didn't specify a race. The faculty at...

After refusing to honour a male student’s request to be separated from his female classmates for religious reasons, a York University professor has found himself at odds with administrators who assert he broke their “obligation to accommodate.” “It represents a great leap backwards,” said sociology professor J. Paul Grayson. “When I was a student, you couldn’t have gotten away with that — it wouldn’t even have been considered.” The issue arose last September in the opening days of SOCI 2030, an online course taught by Mr. Grayson. A student, who remains nameless due to privacy reasons, asked to be counted...