Free Republic

I noticed that your Baby Steps list puts saving for retirement before saving for your kid’s college fund. Sending your kids to college would come first on the timeline, so what is your reasoning behind this?Jen Dear Jen, I advise this approach because everyone is going to retire someday, unless, of course, they happen to die before reaching retirement age. Retiring and eating are necessities. College is a luxury. Lots of people succeed in life without going to college, and thousands have worked their way through college. I worked 40 to 60 hours a week in college, and I still...

A former member of the radical 1970s group the Symbionese Liberation Army says the University of Illinois has told him he'll lose his job teaching there. James Kilgore said Tuesday that he was told earlier this month that the university will not let him teach classes after this semester. He said he was not told why, but he suspects the university was pressured by donors or people with political connections.

Campus Reform on Tuesday reported that Brent Terry, professor at Eastern Connecticut State University who teaches creative writing, told his class that a 2014 GOP victory in the Senate will turn America into a very different kind of country and that colleges will start closing up. A current student, who disagreed with the Terry, who according to Campus Reform, wants to remain anonymous recorded the audio of Terry’s rant against Republicans accusing Republicans that they will not and do not want blacks, Latinos, old and young people to vote and Terry incorrectly stated that it is because they are all...

Imagine walking into a college class Monday morning and finding the professor ranting against those 'racist, misogynist, money-grubbing people' known as Republicans. Welcome to intro to creative writing at Eastern Connecticut State University (ECSU). If the GOP takes control of the House and the Senate in 2014, Professor Brent Terry warned, ‘colleges will start closing up’ and America could very well revert back not to 1955, but to 1855:' There are a lot of people out there that do not want black people to vote, do not want Latinos to vote. Do not want old people to vote, or young...

When Americans over the age of, let us say, 45, look at any of the iconic paintings of America's Founders -- the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the signing of the Constitution, George Washington crossing the Delaware, any of the individual portraits the Founders -- what do they see? They see great men founding a great country. If you ask recent graduates of almost any American university what they see when they look at these paintings, chances are that they see something entirely different. They are apt to see rich, white males who are not great and who...

<p>JACKSON, Miss. -- A national fraternity group has closed its University of Mississippi chapter after three members were accused of tying a noose around the neck of a statue of the first black student to enroll in the Southern college that was all-white at the time.</p>

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...