Free Republic

Have you ever met a college admissions officer? Who does he or she remind you of? The answer is: “someone who works at the DMV.” Put nicely, they’re people who’ve done the best they could with limited options. Put cruelly, they’re midwits on a power trip. Perhaps a tad less cynical. A little skinnier. Glasses a bit higher end. But platonically speaking, college admissions officers and DMV workers emanate toward the same form: the ultimate low busybody. DMV workers afflict the immense class of drivers with their mediocrity. Admissions officers’ victims are a smaller set — people who go (or...

A new report reveals that top colleges and universities that received billions of dollars in foreign donations from countries with authoritarian regimes and failed to report these funds to the U.S. Department of Education also saw a deterioration of free speech and a rise in antisemitism on their campuses. The Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy has published a report titled “The Corruption of the American Mind: How Concealed Foreign Funding of Higher Education in the United States Predicts the Erosion of Democratic Values and Antisemitic Sentiment on Campus.” Released in November, the report has received renewed...

A group of Jewish Harvard University students filed a lawsuit on Wednesday accusing it of enabling anti-Semitism and selectively enforcing its own policies to avoid protecting Jews from harassment. “Harvard permits students and faculty to advocate, without consequence, the murder of Jews and the destruction of Israel, the only Jewish country in the world,” the lawsuit by student Alexander Kestenbaum states. “Meanwhile, Harvard requires students to take a training class that warns that they will be disciplined if they engage in sizeism, fatphobia, racism, transphobia, or other disfavored behavior.” Kestenbaum’s lawsuit, filed jointly with the group Students Against Antisemitism (SAA),...

Now that the Claudine Gay story has died down in the news cycle, let's look at how much bigger this story can end up being. Where most of the pixels spilled over this story ended with the pushback that got gay "fired" to only getting paid $900K per year, that turned out to be only the beginning. Billionaire Bill Ackman decided to stop donating to his alma mater, and led the charge to have Gay removed. But then The Empire Struck Back, via a Business Insider hit piece that tried to smear his wife with with plagiarism charges. One might...

For a long time, people (including me) have been calling for major changes in higher education. Now someone is doing something about it. Hedge-fund tycoon Bill Ackman is waging war to make universities accountable. Ackman started his campaign by demanding the resignations of University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill, Harvard President Claudine Gay and Massachusetts Institute of Technology President Sally Kornbluth after the trio’s shambolic performance before Congress on antisemitic harassment on their campuses. Magill and Gay are now gone, and Kornbluth is worried. Penn’s board of trustees pushed Magill out pretty quickly. Gay, being a diversity hire, was harder...

Plagiarism and Collaboration The College recognizes that the open exchange of ideas plays a vital role in the academic endeavor, as often it is only through discussion with others that one is fully able to process information or to crystallize an elusive concept. Therefore, students generally are encouraged to engage in conversations with their teachers and classmates about their courses, their research, and even their assignments. These kinds of discussions and debates in some ways represent the essence of life in an academic community. And yet, it is important for all scholars to acknowledge clearly when they have relied upon...

Last night, no one at @MIT had a good night’s sleep. Yesterday evening, shortly after I posted that we were launching a plagiarism review of all current MIT faculty, President Kornbluth, members of MIT’s administration, and its board, I am sure that an audible collective gasp could be heard around the campus. Why? Well, every faculty member knows that once their work is targeted by AI, they will be outed. No body of written work in academia can survive the power of AI searching for missing quotation marks, failures to paraphrase appropriately, and/or the failure to properly credit the work...

Fox News host Mark Levin discusses revelations that allege billions in foreign funding of U.S. academia on 'Life, Liberty & Levin.' Egypt, KSA and other middle-eastern countries are funding elite universities, in which anti-Semitism and suppression of free speech on campus have grown exponentially.

In the wake of the resignation of Claudine Gay as the president of Harvard, leftists have found themselves in an embarrassing frenzy of rage-addled excuse-making for the prolific plagiarist and attacks against those who called her out. Chris Rufo was one of Gay's biggest critics and also of DEI and other progressive ideologies infiltrating American academia. Graduates of the illustrious David Hogg University, also known as 'Havard', wasted no time making a mockery of their alma mater in an attempt to belittle Rufo. Christoper Rufo claims his master's is from Harvard U. It's actually from Harvard *Extension.* Harvard U. doesn't...

Whew, what a week it’s been for higher ed!The Claudine Gay debacle at Harvard has raised some fundamental questions about academia in general. She was president of the university, traditionally seen as the pinnacle of American academia.But a careful look at her extremely thin academic publishing record was packed with unattributed borrowings from other authors in her own field.Once all of this became public, and in light of her Congressional testimony in which she found a new love for the free speech that has been heretofore nearly banned at Harvard, it became impossible for her to continue as president and...

The problem is much larger than Gay and demands the right go about dismantling institutions like Harvard with whatever means available.News of Harvard President Claudine Gay’s resignation on Tuesday prompted understandable celebration on the right and much-deserved praise for journalists Christopher Rufo, Christopher Brunet, and Aaron Sibarium, who exposed Gay as a serial plagiarist. No doubt, celebration is in order. Gay was of course not only a plagiarist but a Hamas apologist who shrugged off rampant antisemitism on Harvard’s campus in the wake of the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attack on Israeli civilians. In a shocking congressional hearing last month...

Genocide-depends-on-context Claudine Gay hints fake race card - but it all started with racist-Arabs cheering "Palestinian" Oct 7 atrocitiesTerrorist-loving students ask for 'mental health support.' Students from over 30 campus organizations at Harvard University are now dealing with the consequences of supporting Hamas terrorists. Campus Reform, October 12, 2023, 2:34 pm ET. Several Harvard University students came out quickly after Saturday’s terrorist attacks in Israel to blame Israelis for the carnage and support Hamas. Public scrutiny fell on these individuals and now many appear to regret their pro-Hamas position. The Harvard Arab Alumni Association has reportedly put out a statement...

Research into ‘active collaboration’ between Harvard and Nazi Germany gains relevance as Harvard continues to frame antisemitic rhetoric on campus as freedom of speech Doctor Ernst 'Putzi' Hanfstaengl, formerly Press Chief for German Chancellor Adolf Hitler at his London home on July 7, 1937. (AP Photo/ Eddie Worth) Ninety years ago at Harvard University, campus administrators had what some historians call “friendly” relations with Nazi Germany.Whether Harvard president Claudine Gay’s resignation was catalyzed by a plagiarism scandal or her much-criticized lack of response to calls for the genocide of Jewish students, the university already has a century-old history of repressed...

Harvard University’s Provost and Interim President Dr. Alan Garber has made millions from sitting on pharmaceutical company boards during his time with the school. Garber made more than $2.7 million from board seats with pharmaceutical firms Exelixis, Inc. and Vertex Pharmaceuticals since becoming Harvard provost in 2011, the Harvard Crimson reported in 2019, citing company filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Both firms confirmed to the outlet Garber received compensation without performing any additional duties beyond his board memberships. ... He joined Exelixis’ board in 2005 and received $2.3 million from the company, $1.6 of which came after...

At least 100 American colleges and universities illegally withheld information on approximately $13 billion in undocumented contributions from foreign governments, many of which are authoritarian…. Speech intolerance—manifesting as campaigns to investigate, censor, demote, suspend, or terminate speakers and scholars—was higher at institutions that received undocumented money from foreign regimes.” — ISGAP report, “The Corruption of the American Mind,” November 2023.

Embattled Harvard President Claudine Gay has been hit with a bevy of fresh plagiarism charges according to a new exclusive report. Gay first found herself facing controversy after she refused to say if calls for genocide against Jews violated her school's code of conduct. The now-former president of the University of Pennsylvania similarly waffled and ended up resigning. Harvard stood by Gay, though, giving her a vote of confidence. Shortly after that, multiple examples of plagiarism committed by Gay emerged, but again, Harvard stood by her, putting out a ridiculous response to the scandal. Now, things are going from bad...

A member of Harvard’s student Honor Council called for the resignation of university president Claudine Gay over her ongoing plagiarism scandal — accusing the school’s governing body of having one standard for the embattled administrator and another for the student body. “Gay’s getting off easy,” the student, who sits on the council tasked with deciding sanctions for classmates caught plagiarizing, wrote in a letter published anonymously in the Harvard Crimson Sunday. “Let’s compare the treatment of Harvard undergraduates suspected of plagiarism with that of their president,” they wrote. “When students — my classmates, peers, and friends — appear before the...

Barack Obama’s CRT legacy.Indeed, there is no more apt poster child for the America Obama left us than the pathetic Ms. Gay. In a time when not just race but adherence to noxious neo-Marxism govern hiring decisions everywhere from the campus to the “entertainment” world, (and, increasingly, Fortune 500 boardrooms), no one better exemplifies the ruinous legacy of our 44th president. And ruinous by intention. This is only one facet of the “fundamental transformation” of America that Obama promised on the eve of his 2008 election. All the American people really wanted in electing Obama was to neutralize race as...

The explosion of anti-Semitism on Ivy League campuses has sparked serious backlash. Donors are holding on to their money, early applications are down, and Dave Portnoy has vowed not to hire anyone from Harvard, MIT or Penn. It also has shown the President Claudine Gay to be the classic DEI hire- a serial plagiarist protected by the Harvard Corporation. Gay survives what would get a Harvard student expelled promptly. The widespread Ivy League anti-Semitism begs a question-why the hell are taxpayers funding this? Why are taxpayers funding them at all?The Ivies are endowed with mind-boggling amounts of moneyHere are the...

Harvard's embattled president is facing yet further questions about her academic record, after a statistics expert challenged the data used in a report which helped win her tenure at Stanford. Claudine Gay, who took over as president in July, has been at the center of a firestorm since the October 7 Hamas attacks. She was seemingly slow to condemn students who justified the terrorist violence, and slow to speak out against antisemitism on campus. The harsh spotlight has spread to her academic record, with accusations of plagiarism - and on Tuesday, a data scientist challenged her analytical methods. It was...