Free Republic

“Most of our students come in as good Republicans, but that’s just because they’re ignorant. We change that.” – A distinguished professor of history For the last decade or so, the general public has been regularly briefed on the fact that our universities, particularly the public ones, aren’t the places of balanced intellectual pursuit that they pretend to be. Yet study after study, report after report, and experience after experience argue the opposite: Intellectual “diversity” is often nothing more than variations on a liberal theme. Go too far away from the main leftist stream, and you aren’t being “professional” and...

Climate change and its effects on ecosystems is the No. 1 crisis facing the world, according to Cornell faculty -- but it is a phenomenon not easily reversed. The most important problem that is more easily solved? Insufficient education in science, critical thinking and environmental issues.That is according to a new study that surveyed Cornell's academic staff on the world's leading crises. The new study is published online in Frontiers e-View and will be published in the journal Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment. How Cornell faculty rate the world's most important and the most solvable problemsOn a 5-point scale,...

This is an excerpt from a Kaplan College Test Prep email I just received. Note they advise prospective college students the colleges don't care what candidate you supported, but apparently that is limited to democrats: "Colleges typically offer students several topics on which to write, with themes that provide focus and encourage introspection. Current events are common essay prompts each year—the 2000 presidential election and controversial Florida recount, terrorism and the aftermath of 9/11, and corporate accounting practices with the meltdown of Enron have all been seen in the past. The current presidential election, the war in the Middle East,...

Saying their son was "silenced" by his teacher for talking about hunting in the classroom, the parents of a fourth-grade student at North Bennington Graded School took their son out of school and have taken their case to the local school board. Jared Harrington's mother, Wendy Bordwell, and his father, Martin Harrington, removed their son from school with 10 days left in the school year and home-schooled the 10-year-old boy. "We are aggressively pursuing Jared's right to free speech," Bordwell said. The couple addressed the local school board Monday night to air their grievance. Bordwell said in a telephone interview...

I was asked recently - by a child porn advocate, no less - why I write books with chapter titles that are so “offensive.” Citing two such chapter titles – “Fag Hags and Rainbow Flags” and “The Liar, the Witch, and the Wardrobe” – the child porn advocate asked what some of my fellow UNC professors had done to make me sound so “nasty.” I think the question is worth answering. Put simply, I use provocative language in chapters (more often in columns) criticizing a small minority of my fellow professors for two reasons: 1) because they are proponents of...

Where does all this stuff that you�ve heard about this morning � the victim feminism, the gay rights movement, the invented statistics, the rewritten history, the lies, the demands, all the rest of it � where does it come from? For the first time in our history, Americans have to be fearful of what they say, of what they write, and of what they think. They have to be afraid of using the wrong word, a word denounced as offensive or insensitive, or racist, sexist, or homophobic. We have seen other countries, particularly in this century, where this has been...

New Haven, CT (LifeNews.com) -- Yale University is in the news again after an art student generated national controversy with her project that supposedly included video footage of multiple self-abortions. Now, the president of the Ivy League school is accused of comparing pro-life advocates to Saudi Arabia extremists.At the American kickoff of a religious foundation former British Prime Minister Tony Blair started, Yale University president Richard Levin made a comment sure to upset the majority of Americans who are pro-life.He said that pro-life Americans who support the current Bush administration policy of prohibiting taxpayer funding of abortions overseas are like...

Some stand in protest during President Bush's commencement speech at Furman University.

A middle school health teacher is under investigation, accused of teaching too much about sex. Parents say the teacher is saying crude and explicit things that don't belong in the classroom. Dewayne Smith says, "These are our children, and we're not going to breach the firewall of innocence." Parents say sex education went too far inside the classroom full of 8th-graders at Fort Herriman Middle School. Suzanne Johnson told us, "She explained how the teacher talked about masturbation. Girl masturbation, boys, the wrong ways … the right ways to have sex, the wrong ways to have sex. How long to...

ST. LOUIS -- Some felt the silent protest with white armbands and the dramatic turning of backs was disrespectful. But those who took part said it was a fitting way to show their disapproval that Washington University was honoring a woman whose views and life’s work they strongly disagree with. For her part, Phyllis Schlafly, the 83-year-old at the center of the controversy, said she thought it was "juvenile" of students who were "raining on their own parade." But it didn’t ruin her moment, she said. At today’s commencement ceremony held on a sunny Brookings Quadrangle, Schlafly did not seem...

A senior at Missouri State University, studying social work, she’d already helped found a Christian sorority, and was investing a lot of her free time in a place called ‘The Potter’s House,” a local Christian outreach barely disguised as a coffee shop. She was excited about her growing faith, but increasingly eager to put that faith into action. “I kept asking God, ‘Why aren’t You using me?’” she remembers. “Is there something wrong with me? Am I not strong enough?” And yet, by her own admission, Emily was not exactly the type to find a fray and fling herself into...

BLOOMER, Wis. - A new Marine who's graduating from Bloomer High School this month won't be able to wear his military uniform during the commencement ceremony.

The University of Toledo confirmed yesterday that an administrator who wrote a column critical of gay rights for a local publication has been fired. Crystal Dixon, associate vice president for human resources, was terminated on Thursday following about a week on paid administrative leave and a predisciplinary meeting May 5.

The May 9 edition of the New York Post carries a short article by an Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis student named Keith John Sampson. He tells a story of how he was charged with "racial harassment" simply because he was "caught" reading an anti-Ku Klux Klan book. I'm not kidding.  Sampson tells his story: The book was Todd Tucker's 'Notre Dame vs. the Klan: How the Fighting Irish Defeated the Ku Klux Klan'; I was reading it on break from my campus job as a janitor. The same book is in the university library . . . . But that didn't...

COLUMBIA, SC (AP) - More than 200 students and faculty members at Furman University have signed a statement protesting President Bush's visit to speak at the South Carolina school's commencement later this month. Bush is scheduled to speak at Furman's graduation ceremonies May 31. The 222 co-signers say in a statement on the school's Web site that they object to the president's visit for several reasons, including the war in Iraq. They also cite the administration's "obstructing progress on reducing greenhouse gases while favoring billions in tax breaks and subsidies to oil companies that are earning record profits." English professor...

Washington University's decision to bestow an honorary degree on conservative political activist and author Phyllis Schlafly has stirred outrage among some students and faculty. Opponents of Schlafly's honorary doctorate formed a group on the social-networking website Facebook and had 1,023 members as of Monday evening. ... [Senior Kevin] Hess ... said the outrage is not over Schlafly's politics but over comments she has made that he called "unquestionably inflammatory and unfounded." ... Schlafly already has a bachelor's degree and a law degree from the university. Mary Ann Dzuback, the director of the women and gender studies department at Washington University...

"We're here, we're queer, get used to it!" Dozens of lesbian activists at Smith College climbed in through windows and stormed the podium in a riot scene shortly after Ryan Sorba began a speech on his upcoming book, The Born Gay Hoax. The melee forced an end to the speech before a packed hall in the library on the Northhampton campus. Uniformed police officers and a plainclothes security guard were in the room but mostly just stood and watched. Rather than take action against the rioters, the officers and a university official walked to the podium and ordered Sorba to...

Rioting lesbians have stormed a speech by "Born Gay Hoax" author Ryan Sorba on the campus of Smith College in Massachusetts, shutting down his address, according to two major pro-family organizations, Americans for Truth and Mass Resistance. "Beware lesbians with frying pans (if you care about free speech)," AFT said in his announcement. "Lesbian activists at Smith College just couldn't stand by and let a young critic explain his views about the supposed innateness of homosexuality – so they stormed Ryan Sorba's speech on the 'Born Gay Hoax' and forced him to end it prematurely." "Thus they decided for everyone...

Dozens of lesbian activists at Smith College climbed in through windows and stormed the podium in a riot scene shortly after Ryan Sorba began a speech on his upcoming book, The Born Gay Hoax. The melee forced an end to the speech before a packed hall in the library on the Northampton campus. Uniformed police officers and a plainclothes security guard were in the room but mostly just stood and watched. Rather than take action against the rioters, the officers and a university official walked to the podium and ordered Sorba to leave the room “for his own safety.”

Five years into the war in Iraq, military history seems to be experiencing a golden age. Hollywood has been cranking out war movies. Publishers have been lining bookstore shelves with new battle tomes, which consumers are eagerly lapping up. Even the critics have been enjoying themselves. Two of the last five Pulitzer Prizes in history were awarded to books about the American military. Four of the five Oscar nominees for best documentary this year were about warfare. Business, for military historians, is good.

A pioneering expert on hurricane forecasting says he may soon lose funding due to his skepticism about man-made global warming, according to a report in the Houston Chronicle. Dr. William Gray, who once said that pro-global warming scientists are "brainwashing our children," claims that Colorado State University will no longer promote his yearly North Atlantic hurricane forecasts due to his controversial views. Gray complained in a memo to the head of Colorado State’s Department of Atmospheric Sciences that "this is obviously a flimsy excuse and seems to me to be a cover for the Department's capitulation to the desires of...

Sometimes Berserkeley isn't so berserk after all. Many ideas spawned in Berkeley - and roundly mocked by the rest of the country - have taken root and have been adopted by cities everywhere. Among them: police radios, a ban on Styrofoam, health benefits for domestic partners and a switch to biodiesel for city cars.These and other Berkeley firsts are part of a painstakingly researched show at the Berkeley History Center that chronicles the city's long history of civic innovation. "Berkeley, a City of Firsts" covers dozens of ideas that started there, including some that flopped and a few that Berkeley...

A community college in New York has been presented with a demand letter from the American Center for Law and Justice to halt a professor's classroom practices that allegedly have damaged at least one student – so far. The letter from the ACLJ targets Suffolk County Community College and will be the prelude to a federal lawsuit if the issue isn't resolved, the organization said. At issue is a professor's demand that students "change their own personal viewpoints or state that they are unsure of whether their own personal beliefs are correct" on religious issues, according to the letter. That...

In what has become an annual rite of passage, University of Colorado students are being subjected this month to a round of diversity workshops preaching that all whites are racist. The latest round, hosted by the university's women's resource center last Friday, was titled "White on White Taskforce: Acting to Dismantle Racism." According to organizers, it was "designed to give White people tools to dismantle racism on campus." At the workshop, students received a handout espousing the "underlying assumptions" of its leaders. Most notably, it read "reverse racism is impossible," meaning that non-whites cannot be racist. And also of interest,...

Catholic university to black, pro-life speaker: You’re not Welcomed! …but we’ll make room for Al Franken and transgender speaker. Liberal administrators at the University of St. Thomas, a Catholic university and private college in Minnesota, censored the appearance of prominent pro-life and black speaker Star Parker. On April 21, 2008, Star—the best-selling author of numerous books—was slated to speak on campus about the devastating impact abortion has on minority communities. UST Vice President of Student Affairs Jane Canney nixed the idea entirely, citing “concerns” that the lecture was being underwritten by Young America’s Foundation. Katie Kieffer, a 2005 alumna of...

Colleges' final frontier: mixed-gender housing Jason Carmignani hung out with his roommate, Yael Bassal, at Clark University. "We're both pretty mellow," he said. (Dominic Chavez/Globe Staff) Email|Print|Single Page| Text size – + By Peter Schworm Globe Staff / April 2, 2008 In the Woodstock era, the advent of coed dorms caused a stir, with Life magazine proclaiming the development "an intimate revolution on campus." Coed floors came along over the next two decades, giving college students immediate proximity to each other. The next step, coed suites and bathrooms, brought the sexes even closer together. Now, some colleges are crossing the...

The Gamma Phi Beta sorority at University of North Dakota has been put on temporary social probation while the university investigates complaints stemming from a November party during which sorority members and their guests donned mock Indian garb and red face and body paint. The temporary probation was issued by both the UND Dean of Student’s Office, which will investigate the complaints, and by the Gamma Phi Beta International office in Centennial, Colo. The probation means Gamma Phi won’t be allowed to host or participate in social activities with other sororities and fraternities or other student groups, either on...

ITHACA--The Chaplain at Cornell University has announced his support for the racist and anti-American sermons of controversial pastor Rev. Jeremiah Wright.Speaking on Thursday (March 27) Rev. Kenneth Clarke defended those sermons by Wright, called them “a different style of patriotism.” According to the Ithaca Journal: Clarke challenged the audience to go beyond the sound bites and listen to Wright's entire sermon from Sept. 16, 2001 where he criticizes America. Clarke compared Wright's criticism of America to commentary found in speeches by Fredrick Douglas and Martin Luther King Jr.The critiques are not unpatriotic, Clarke said.The statements “reflect a different style of...

Vandals Trash Bucknell's Conservative Newspaper A student-run newspaper at Bucknell University was the target of vandals last month as over half of the copies in the paper's first press run were destroyed and/or removed from campus. The attack came as The Counterweight, Bucknell's conservative newspaper, highlighted criticism of the university's sponsorship of "Focus the Nation," a high-tech discussion on climate change. "This vandalism is unacceptable," said Sarah Schubert, the paper's editor. Ms. Schubert believes the act "amounts to censorship. "On a college campus, the free and vigorous exchange of ideas should be wholeheartedly defended by everyone," argued Ms. Schubert. On...

Students in university-run leadership positions are often required to participate in some type of diversity training because simply being a just and logical person is no longer enough to lead a group of people. Instead, one must be immersed in every type of culture, background, and lifestyle the Office of Diversity Programs and Services can comprehend. The Resident Advisor preparation I was given at George Mason University recently was no exception, and I have broken down GMU diversity indoctrination into five easy steps so that you, too, can become the sensitive person the Left wants you to be. Step #1:...

Hey all. Just (1:00 pm EDT) heard on the radio that "several dozen war protestors are blocking traffic on Vestal pkwy on their way to protest at a military recruitment center" mostly students from Binghamton U. I belive there is an Army recruiter be at the old Ames plaza. Naturally the Vestal PD is not arresting any one. I am off to work but if any one is available to get down there it would be good at least to get pictures or video.

The student newspaper at the University of Virginia published a cartoon mocking Christians and Christianity after determining it met its own "criteria" at The Cavalier Daily, but later jerked it and has been backpedaling ever since. The illustration – and another earlier cartoon – were the subject of an alert from the American Family Association, which urged readers to take advantage of a special website procedure it set up to send an e-mail to Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine, with a copy to Daniel LaVista, the executive director of the state Council of Higher Education for Virginia. "Last week, the University...

Today's schools are becoming increasingly liberal, not only in material but in the manner in which it is taught. Im a sophomore and in my high school, conservative ideology is blasphemous and shunned by students as well as teachers (because of teachers) . In fact most conservative students, including myself tend to keep quiet about our beliefs for fear of being ostracized by out friends and having our grades lowered by our teachers. (I playfully call it being in the closet, because in my school its a shocker when someone gets exposed as being "pro -bush" gasp!). When writing an...

http://boortz.com/nuze/index.html POLITICAL CORRECTNESS IN HIGHER EDUCATION A janitor working for Indiana University - Purdue University Indianapolis has been reprimanded for reading a book on campus. Keith John Sampson does janitorial work for the campus while accumulating credits for a degree in communications. Sampson checked out a book from the government library called Notre Dame vs. the Klan: How the Fighting Irish Defeated the Ku Klux Klan. The book is apparently about two days in May 1924 when a group of Notre Dame students got into a street fight with members of the Ku Klux Klan. http://www.nuvo.net/articles/21st_century_catch22/ The problem began when...

A new plan by a California lawmaker would allow schools to be used to promote the overthrow of the U.S. government, and let teachers in public district classrooms "inculcate in the mind of any pupil a preference for communism," according to a traditional values advocacy organization. "Just when we thought the indoctrination in California's public schools couldn't get any worse, state lawmakers introduce bills that will further brainwash innocent children," said a statement from Capitol Resource Institute, a traditional values and family advocacy organization based in California. "We're in California. Of course it has a chance of succeeding," CRI spokeswoman...

SAN FRANCISCO, March 4, 2008—Yesterday, San Francisco State University (SFSU) settled a lawsuit challenging its speech codes by agreeing to modify several unconstitutional policies to make them consistent with the First Amendment. The settlement also requires SFSU to pay damages to members of the university's College Republicans as well as to pay the College Republicans' attorney fees. The lawsuit—part of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education's (FIRE's) Speech Codes Litigation Project—was filed in July 2007 by attorneys from the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF). "Unconstitutional speech codes have been dealt yet another blow," FIRE President Greg Lukianoff said. "This lawsuit...

Dennis Lennox II said he filed a formal complaint Monday with the U.S. Department of Education alleging three Central Michigan University faculty violated his rights under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act. Lennox also said he filed a criminal complaint with the Michigan State Police, accusing the faculty members of falsely and maliciously accusing another, malicious annoyance by writing and use of a computer program, computer system or computer network to commit a crime. Central Michigan Life has obtained copies of the education complaint and e-mails sent by assistant English language and literature professors Jeffrey Weinstock, Allegra Blake and...

An 8-year-old boy is preparing to return to his home school district in Colorado as a girl, so school officials are designating two school restrooms as unisex facilities, and preparing to counsel other students on the issue of transgenderism. The report comes from KUSA-Television in Denver, which did not identify the third-grade student or his family in the Castle Rock suburban district. But the report said the student had attended his home district several years ago, as a boy, and then had taken classes in another district for a time. One parent, identified by the television station as Dave M.,...

A caller to "The Chris Core Show" this morning (heard on 630 WMAL in Washington, D.C. from 9:00 - Noon) told Chris that the majority of the students assembled at the Obama - Kennedy event yesterday (Mon., 1/28/08)at American University in Tenleytown, DC were told by their teachers to attend the event and that "roll call" would be taken there. The caller (named "Lee") said that many of the students were there for 3 hours prior to the start of the event and that many of them were non too happy about it. He spoke to a few of them,...

Wallingford, Conn. (AP) -- Following protests from students, former presidential adviser Karl Rove has withdrawn as this year's commencement speaker at a prestigious prep school, the school's headmaster said Monday. The choice of Rove as speaker for the June commencement at Choate Rosemary Hall had led some students to plan to walk out of the ceremony. Others had sought to bring comedian Stephen Colbert to campus for an alternate speech. Instead of commencement, Rove now will speak at the school on Feb. 11, headmaster Edward J. Shanahan said. Shanahan said he will deliver the commencement address at the school, the...

When Diversity Training Goes Awry by Jamal Watson Jan 24, 2008, 17:00 When Diversity Training Goes Awry Done incorrectly, what should be a useful exercise can and has backfired on some colleges and universities. By Jamal Watson Initially, Courtney Halligan, a first-year student at the University of Delaware, was not opposed to attending a diversity training session that was required of all incoming freshmen. In fact, the 18-year-old New Jersey native assumed that the experience would be an opportunity for her to learn more about students from different backgrounds. It didn’t take long for Halligan to change her mind. Dr....

USC Takes Left Turn by: Don Irvine, January 18, 2008 In the 2000 election cycle USC professors and staff members donated slightly more money to George Bush’s presidential campaign than to Al Gore. What a difference eight years make. According to a report by the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Responsive Politics for the current election cycle have given a total of $66,250 to presidential candidates with 98 percent of that amount going to Democrats making the university one of the most pro-democratic party campuses in the nation. This has led USC political science professor Anthony Kammas to question the role...

Why do PhDs in academia tend to be politically liberal? A paragraph in Science magazine’s feature “Random Samples” on December 21 suggested a reason: conservatives value other goals, like going into business to make money, or choosing to stay home and raise a family... ... It appears that conservatives are the fittest, working hard to pass on their genes, while liberals are like parasites, advancing primarily by taking over the host (the classroom) and churning out clones to infect other cells. A university setting is a contrived, unnatural environment where the parasites thrive. In the open air of true academic...

A prestigious Seattle prep school that touts Microsoft founders Bill Gates and Paul Allen among its alumni, canceled an appearance by conservative commentator Dinesh D'Souza after complaints from a group of teachers and some parents. D'Souza, a Hoover Institution fellow and former Reagan administration policy analyst, was scheduled to speak in March on U.S. foreign policy and Iraq at Lakeside School, but faculty members objected after reading some of his writings on race-related issues. A Lakeside staff member explained through an e-mail, according to Seattle Post-Intelligencer columnist Robert Jamieson Jr., "Even if an intention was simply to offer diverse viewpoints,...

A Midwestern university has mandated "Merry -----mas" as a holiday greeting, banning "Christ" in apparent violation of the U.S. Constitution, according to Liberty Counsel, which works to advance religious freedom and the traditional family. The events have developed at Southwestern Oklahoma State University in Weatherford, Okla. The controversy began when the university's director of human resources recently visited various departments and said that decorations featuring the word 'Christmas' in any areas of the university must be immediately removed," the organization said. "He also instructed the employees not to say 'Christmas' while on the job. As a result the employees cannot...

Southwestern Oklahoma State University in Weatherford has issued a disturbing directive forbidding employees to say or write the word "Christmas." This directive was given by the University upon legal advice of the (Oklahoma Attorney General, W.A. Drew Edmondson). Liberty Counsel sent a demand letter to the University following a complaint from a University affiliate. The controversy began when the University's Director of Human Resources recently visited various departments and said that decorations featuring the word "Christmas" in any areas of the University must be immediately removed. He also instructed the employees not so say "Christmas" while on the job. As...

[C]onservatives and libertarians are outnumbered by liberals and Marxists by roughly two to one in economics, more than five to one in political science, and by 20 to one or more in anthropology and sociology. [There is also] strong statistical evidence that talented conservative undergraduates in the humanities, social sciences and sciences are less likely to pursue a Ph.D than their liberal peers, in part for personal reasons, but also in part because they are offered fewer opportunities to do research with their professors. Further, academic job markets seem to discriminate against socially conservative Ph.Ds. ...these academics must publish more...

Matthew J. Schmitz December 15, 2007 Princeton, NJ After receiving multiple death threats, a Princeton student was beat unconscious last Friday in what appears to be a politically-motivated assault. The attack came after emails saying, "WE WILL KILL YOU," were sent to the officers of a student group that promotes traditional views of marriage and sexual ethics. Francisco Nava '09, suffered serious abrasions, bleeding, and a light concussion after being beat until he lost consciousness this Friday. The attack, which occured within blocks of Princeton's campus, appears to be connected to multiple death threats received by Nava and other officers...

The Answer Is Diversity by: Malcolm A. Kline, December 07, 2007 When the higher education establishment and its enablers focus a hard self-critical lens on themselves, they see what they want to. Thus, the American Psychological Association publishes something called the Journal of Diversity in Higher Education that features articles such as: • “Are Engineering Schools masculine and Authoritarian? Their Mission Statements Say Yes.” • “Does Diversity at Undergraduate Institutions Influence Student Outcomes?” • “Everyday Discrimination in a National Sample of Incoming Law Students,” and • “Color-Blind Racial Attitudes, Social Dominance Orientation, Racial-Ethnic Group Membership, and College Students’ Perceptions of...

Coed Dorms, Coed Floors — Now, Coed Rooms By REBECCA JAMES   From left, Brienna Dees, Pat Vescio, Kayla Capponi and Alexia Martinez often hang out together in Capponi's dorm room at the State University of New York at Oswego. Martinez is a sophomore, the other three are freshmen. (Photo by John Berry)     A new wave of coed housing that allows men and women to share rooms is hitting campuses around the country, and Cornell University senior Vince Hartman thinks it's about time."A lot of students are over the age of 18 and they have friends that are...