Free Republic

Get this: Conservatives give better graduation speeches than their more liberal-minded counterparts. After reviewing two commencement-speech anthologies - "The World is Waiting For You," which features 18 speeches by liberals, and "Remembering Who We Are," which showcases 30 conservative speeches - Washington Post blogger and book critic Carlos Lozada gives five reasons why conservatives do a better job. First, he writes, conservatives are more likely to speak to graduates as individuals, rather than as members of a movement or generation. Whereas liberal speakers say things such as, "you are the first generation that ...," conservative speakers are more likely to...

From TV Newser. Not too many conservatives on the list. FBN’s Maria Bartiromo: New York University – Graduate School of Arts and Science (NY), May 19 CBS’s Margaret Brennan: Niagara University – College of Arts and Sciences and Education (NY), May 16 PBS’s David Brooks: Westmont College (CA), May 8… Dartmouth College (NH), June 14 NBC’s Tom Brokaw: High Point University (NC), May 8 Yahoo’s Katie Couric: University of Wisconsin-Madison (WI), May 16 NBC’s Josh Elliott: University of California, Santa Barbara – Humanities and Arts (CA), June 15 NBC’s Richard Engel: Stanford University (CA), June 14 CNBC’s Sharon Epperson: Carlow...

According to the Rutgers Daily Targum, freshman Emmet Brennan helped author a bill “…to create black, Latino, Asian, and third-gender mascot friends to accompany the school’s original “Scarlet Knight” mascot adopted in 1955.” “Our mascot does not represent how diverse we are as a school,” decided Brennan after he “…noticed the mascot’s fair skin and blue eyes while working as a press box server during the university’s football games.” Katie Park, writing for the Daily Targum, tells her readers: After taking issue with the mascot’s complexion, Brennan began collaborating with student Mohamed Asker who currently serves as the SA’s student...

Ronald Nelson from Memphis, Tennessee, is a senior at Houston High School. He was accepted to all eight Ivy League schools--that's Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Dartmouth, Columbia, Brown, Cornell, and UPenn--along with Johns Hopkins, Stanford, and Vanderbilt, among a few other schools. While any of these schools are fantastic options, Nelson made headlines for another reason: he turned them all down. Nelson will be attending the University of Alabama this fall, as a member of the school's honors program.While it may seem shocking that a student would turn down a prestigious university for a state school, Nelson actually showed impressive maturity...

An interesting doom-and-gloom piece appeared on ZeroHedge this week entitled “A Generational Storm is Coming.” Apparently written as a rather depressing commencement address for the graduating class of 2015, it discusses the current economic realities facing young people and tends to put a lot of blame on the older generation for screwing them over. OK, fine, whatever. But it did have a couple of interesting points regarding college students: “[The student loan delinquency rate] will probably go much higher … as students take on more debt. Total outstanding student debt is expected to bubble up to $3.3 trillion by 2025....

Twitchy yesterday reported on a lawsuit filed against Columbia University by Paul Nungesser, a student who claims the school has sided with the woman who accused him of rape, even though both school and law enforcement authorities rejected the case after interviews and investigation. Since then, Columbia student Emma Sulkowicz has gained publicity in 35 countries by carrying a mattress with her wherever she goes on campus — an art project approved for college credit by visual arts professor Jon Kessler, who referred to the mattress in the Columbia Spectator as the site of Sulkowicz’ rape.Whether the lawsuit determines if this is an example of a...

Imagine what would happen if we passed a law that required every elected representative in the U.S. to take a phone call from a minimum of 10 constituents a day (and I mean individual constituents, not lobbyists and interest groups). Under this law, representatives would also be evaluated by Likert scale surveys on how well they meet the needs of their constituent callers. Anytime survey scores slip below a certain numerical threshold of acceptability, the elected official is fired from office, regardless of the results of democratic election or the prescriptions of the state or federal constitutions. By such standards...

(Reuters) - The 20-year-old former student sought in the fatal shooting of an employee at a North Carolina community college was arrested on Tuesday after being found sleeping on a beach in Florida, police said. Stancil is accused of killing Wayne Community College print shop director Ron Lane not long after Lane arrived for work Monday morning. Lane was an employee at the school for 18 years, officials said, and Stancil had worked for him when he was a student.

In 1998, Vijay Chokal-Ingam was “determined to become a doctor,” but his 3.1 GPA significantly reduced his chances. When he realized his application wouldn’t cut it, he came up with a back-up plan — he pretended to be black. Chokal-Ingam, brother of famous actress Mindy Kaling, said he “knew that admission standards for certain minorities under affirmative action were, let’s say… less stringent.” In a blog post, Chokal-Ingam explains how he ended up getting into the St. Louis University School of Medicine despite his low GPA and MCAT score: So, I shaved my head, trimmed my long Indian eyelashes, and applied to...

The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) is busy making good on its promise to fight for students’ free speech rights through a massive litigation campaign. Since last year, FIRE’s Stand Up For Free Speech effort has filed nine First Amendment lawsuits against campuses that quash the First Amendment, according to its website. Four of the cases have already enjoyed successes in FIRE’s favor, and the others continue to wind their way through the court system. FIRE’s early victories in its litigation campaign illustrate that colleges’ limits on free speech are onerous and unconstitutional. But the battle continues.

WASHINGTON (CNS) — Wyoming Catholic College, a Catholic university founded in 2005 in Lander, announced in late February that it “shall not participate in federal student loan programs.”The decision came after months of analysis and deliberations by the college and its board of directors.“While the financial benefits are undeniable,” said a news release, “the increasingly burdensome regulatory requirements are clearly troubling for faith-based institutions.” The decision to forego federal student loan and grant programs was reached in a unanimous vote by the college’s board of directors.“While respecting that some of our peer institutions have reached a different conclusion on this...

Gabrielle Giffords, former U.S. Representative from Arizona, and her husband Mark Kelly, a Navy pilot and NASA astronaut, will be this year’s speakers for the Class Day ceremonies at Harvard Law School. Class Day will take place on Wednesday, May 27, 2015. Giffords served as U.S. Representative from Arizona’s 8th Congressional District from 2007 to 2012. She survived an assassination attempt in Tucson in 2011 while meeting with her constituents. The gun attack killed six people and injured 13 others, including Giffords, who sustained a gunshot wound to the head. Despite her massive injuries and subsequent neurosurgeries, Giffords returned to...

Catholic universities in America have lost sight of their institutional identities. Only direct intervention from the Vatican can reverse their decline.Catholic universities in America are typically regarded as offering a well-rounded education combined with one of the premier intellectual forces of the West: the Catholic Church, and its vast well of knowledge in almost every discipline. Unlike state-sponsored institutions, which can offer a quality education, Catholic universities have the advantage of a grounded and time-tested moral foundation. This foundation, and the discoveries, advances, and progress it has produced, is unrivaled in any other Western tradition. Secular universities, good though they...

The self-proclaimed champions of women’s rights, the political left, is once again insisting that a woman’s right to protect herself from sexual attackers should be regulated, restricted, and in some cases banned. After all, only American Liberals would believe that a woman being raped is morally superior to a rapist being shot. Arguing that concealed carry on college campuses would actually “reinforce rape culture” on campus, an editorial in the University of North Carolina’s student’s newspaper argued against arming young (law abiding) women.Concealed weapons would not significantly reduce sexual assault and would create inadvertent risks within other forms of interpersonal violence…...

A reader sent me a copy of the cover of the new University of North Georgia continuing education catalog asked with this question, “Are they crazy?” It’s a valid question given the awkwardness of the image and its pairing with a headline that asks, “Why follow when you can lead?” The illustration features two exultant white men — dressed like missionaries for some reason — well ahead of a woman in heels wearing what looks to be an ensemble from “Dynasty” and a black male in more casual attire who appears to be struggling to finish the race. I thought...

Count by The College Fix finds roughly three times as many anti-Walker pieces than pro-Walker pieces in Wisconsin student newspaper’s opinion section in recent weeks. MADISON, Wis. – Over the last month and a half, the opinion pages of the student newspaper at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have been crowded with arguments against Gov. Scott Walker, suggesting – among other things – that his platform will decimate higher education, ruin the environment and hurt the economy. The launch of the second semester here in late January coincided with Gov. Walker’s prominent thrust into the national spotlight, with his higher education...

“March madness” holds a different meaning in the legal world. While most of the country looks forward to fast breaks and Cinderella upsets, law schools are bracing themselves for another type of madness: the annual carnage left by the U.S. News & World Report rankings. This year’s rankings drop on March 10, to be followed by the usual chaos. Deans at highly placed law schools will issue news releases; deans with less fortunate rankings will have their already hectic lives turned upside down. The lucky ones will get fired. The unlucky ones will have to deal with the fallout. A...

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) —More Americans are saving money for college using 529 accounts. They amount of money in the savings plans grew to a record $248 billion in 2014, about 9 percent more than the previous year.People are starting to save for their children earlier than ever. About 31 percent of the savings plans are opened by parents when their child is barely a year old, or before, according to the College Savings Plans Network.That's smart, given the skyrocketing cost of college tuition and fees in recent years."You really should be starting to save for college as soon as...

The Rev. Theodore M. Hesburgh, a transformative figure in Catholic higher education who led the University of Notre Dame for 35 years and wielded influence with U.S. presidents on civil rights and other charged issues of his era, died Feb. 26 on the university campus. He was 97. A Notre Dame spokesman confirmed the death and said the cause was not immediately known. Father Hesburgh, president of Notre Dame from 1952 to 1987, was considered one of the most important university leaders of the past century. On his watch, the Midwestern school once known mainly for Fighting Irish football became...

The Ontario government has shut down U.S.-based Everest College, a chain of 14 private career schools. On Thursday, the superintendent of private career colleges, the independent regulator that governs schools like Everest and others in the province, said it has suspended the chain's licence to operate in Ontario as a private college, effective immediately. The office "can propose to revoke a private career college's registration if [the superintendent] no longer satisfied that it can be expected to be financially responsible in its operation as a private career college, considering its current financial position," the regulator said in a statement.