Free Republic

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo., March 30, 2017 (LifeSiteNews) — An open lesbian has been chosen to be the next commandant of the U.S. Air Force Academy, according to a USAF Academy report and other media. Col. Kristin Goodwin has a “wife” and two children. She will take charge of the USAF Academy pending approval by the U.S. Senate. If approved, she likely will assume her new position in May. That is usually a formality, but conservative opposition to her appointment might make it less so.

A student says he was suspended from Rollins College for challenging his Muslim professor’s anti-Christian assertions, including her claim that Jesus’ crucifixion never took place. Twenty-year-old Marshall Polston, a sophomore at the private, Florida-based four-year college, said that the professor of his Middle Eastern Humanities class also told students that Jesus’ disciples did not believe he was God.

Paul Dionne, Inclusive Success Coordinator for Beloit College’s Office for Academic Diversity and Inclusiveness, gave a speech entitled, “Working Against Whiteness” as part of a “Love Made Public” lecture series. The lecture series started during the fall, but resumed this semester. To help define “whiteness,” Dionne instructed the student attendees to chant “imperialist, capitalist, white supremacist patriarchy,” a phrase originating from feminist and self-avowed socialist bell hooks, who spells her name with all lowercase letters. “Working against whiteness for me is interrogating myself and who I am and where I come from and all of my privileges,” said the school...

A group of Wellesley College professors recently sent a campus-wide email arguing that bringing controversial speakers to campus can cause grave harm to students. The full letter, which was obtained and published by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), was written by six professors who stand on the Wellesley Commission for Race, Ethnicity, and Equity.

The Presbyterian Church (USA) is looking into ways to handle an apparent drop in satisfactory rates in Bible test scores among people preparing for ministry within the Mainline denomination. Earlier this month, a task force created by the executive committee of the Committee on Theological Education released a statement on the Bible Content Examinations and a trend of lower than average evaluation rates that began in the summer. The Presbyterian Church (USA) is looking into ways to handle an apparent drop in satisfactory rates in Bible test scores among people preparing for ministry within the Mainline denomination. Earlier this month,...

Trump enforces Obama order for UC Berkeley to remove 13,800 hours of free educational videos from YouTube This is the YouTube channel for University of California, Berkeley: https://www.youtube.com/user/UCBerkeley/videosIt has (or used to have) 13,800 hours of free educational content.On August 30, 2016, the Justice Department sent this letter to the school, which criticized the videos for not being closed captioned, and for not having audio descriptions of content that was visible on chalkboards.The school responded by issuing a statement which said it might have to remove the videos because of this. Specifically, the school’s statement said:“… we might not be able...

While college administrators and professors accept disgraceful behavior, we as taxpayers, donors and parents should not foot the bill. Let's look at some of that behavior. A University of Washington Tacoma Writing Center press release told students that expecting Americans to use proper grammar perpetuates racism. The University of Nebraska Omaha will host a workshop for "anti-racist allies" to develop "action plans" that confront America's "foundation of systemic oppression" in the context of "the current political climate." The workshop was inspired by professor Tammie Kennedy's recent book, titled "Rhetorics of Whiteness." She will lead a discussion on "taking action against...

President Trump is set to sign an executive order aimed at boosting historically black colleges and universities, known as HBCUs, on Tuesday amid a period of increased outreach to the institutions from high-level members of the administration. The order will allow HBCU officials to serve as advisors to Trump on his urban agenda as well as increase the private sector's role in the colleges and universities, a White House official said.

Monday evening, the Education Department issued a statement from Education Secretary Betsy DeVos that has infuriated many advocates for historically black colleges. The statement comes when many leaders of black colleges are in Washington for meetings at the White House and with Republican Congressional leaders, who have been wooing black colleges and pledging to help them. Most of the statement is innocuous. She praises black colleges. In perhaps a sign not to expect too much money from the Trump administration, she says, "[r]ather than focus solely on funding, we must be willing to make the tangible, structural reforms that will...

The “swamp” in question of course is Washington DC, but also includes much of the bureaucracy, judiciary, and cultural command posts of the country, such as the media and entertainment industries. The tributaries comprise America’s educational system, long dominated by the radical left and protected by tenure and union power. It is this ideological effluent center that has done so much to poison the discourse of American politics, smearing every institution that contributed to the country’s greatness, and radiating hatred of all things most citizens hold dear—family, patriotism, free enterprise, free speech, freedom of religion, the Bill of Rights generally,...

A student at an Orange County, California community college has been suspended after he recorded one of his professors telling her class the election of Donald Trump was an “act of terrorism.” From the LA Times: In a Feb. 9 letter, Victoria Lugo, interim dean of students at the Costa Mesa college, informed Caleb O’Neil of the suspension for one “primary (fall/spring) semester in addition to the summer” and other disciplinary actions against him, including that he submit a written apology to the professor, Olga Perez Stable Cox, and a three-page essay asking him to examine why he filmed Cox’s class,...

A recent guest lecture at Swarthmore College by a prominent homosexual seminary professor highlighted a growing argument among the so-called queer community that Jesus was bisexual. In particular, the Rev. Patrick Cheng, a professor at the Episcopal Divinity School in Massachusetts, told the students that Jesus was a subversive person and God’s way of “queering the world,” so to speak. Cheng said Christ was “always coming out in the gospels” and that “Christ is God coming out.” “At its heart, Christianity is queer,” Cheng told the students during the Feb. 7 talk. “It’s not just a matter of being tolerant....

One of the good aspects of federalism is that it allows states to go their own way. As Justice Louis Brandeis put it, they can be “laboratories of democracy.” Unfortunately, that often means that interest groups will capture state legislatures and have their political allies push through foolish legislation that will harm most of the state’s residents while benefiting just a few – mainly their members. (That, incidentally, was true in the case that inspired Brandeis’ observation, New State Ice v. Liebmann. Fortunately, the majority ruled against Oklahoma’s scheme for cartelizing the ice business.) Two states, New York and Rhode...

In a recent article, "Surge in foreign students may be crowding Americans out of elite colleges," The Washington Post stumbled on the truth about one of the factors affecting the rising cost of college for American students. The percentage of foreign students enrolling in both public and private colleges and universities has skyrocketed. Their sponsors, Middle East governments and regimes like China, buy their way into American colleges and universities for their own students, forcing up costs for the dwindling number of Americans fortunate enough to gain admission. It is estimated that over one million international students are enrolled in...

A Virginia university has published an “LGBTQIA+ Terminology” handout defining terms like “cisgender privilege,” “demisexual,” “heterosexism,” and “polyamorous” relationships.

Our Dying Universities Msgr. Charles Pope • February 5, 2017 • The last vestiges of the once impressive institution known as the “university” are disappearing as our culture continues to crumble. Perhaps it is poetic justice, since the universities themselves have been a central cause of the cultural collapse that is burying them.The recent riots at the University of California at Berkeley and on other campuses are the result of a decades-long process that has increasingly sought to silence opinions or facts that are at odds with liberalism. Most universities have become indoctrination centers that tolerate little if any...

In a recent article, “Surge in foreign students may be crowding Americans out of elite colleges,” The Washington Post stumbled on the truth about one of the factors affecting the rising cost of college for American students. The percentage of foreign students enrolling in both public and private colleges and universities has skyrocketed. Their sponsors, Middle East governments and regimes like China, buy their way into American colleges and universities for their own students, forcing up costs for the dwindling number of Americans fortunate enough to gain admission. It is estimated that over one million international students are enrolled in...

Hillsdale, a private college of 1,400 students in southern Michigan that describes itself as “nonsectarian Christian” and dedicated to “civil and religious liberty,” is scarcely known in many circles. But among erudite conservatives — think progeny of William F. Buckley Jr. — it is considered a hidden gem. What they admire is the college’s concentration on the Western philosophical and literary canon (sometimes disparaged as the Great Books of dead white men) and its reverent treatment of the American founding documents as the political culmination of that tradition — a tradition that scholars at Hillsdale say has been desecrated by...

Women’s studies professors are now divided over whether women’s studies is too vagina-centric. The controversy centers on a planned panel called “Pregnancy Without Women” slated for an upcoming National Women’s Studies Association conference.

Liberty University President Jerry Falwell Jr. said he will lead two new presidential task forces to be created by President Donald J. Trump to reform the Department of Education. “I’ve been in conversations with [presidential adviser] Steve Bannon and others, and the president is forming some education task forces, that I’ve been asked to head,” Falwell said Tuesday. Falwell said there would be two presidential task forces on education, and he would lead both.