Free Republic

The proliferation of dubious conferences on "academic freedom" continues unabated. And, in each case, biased and politicized Middle East studies academics are a major component.In October, 2007, the University of Chicago hosted, "In Defense of Academic Freedom," an event whose unifying theme was "the notion that Jewish groups have degraded the quality and breadth of discussion in the media and in Washington." Hardly the stuff of self-described progressives, but such is the state of discourse in the corridors of academia today. Then there was the "DePaul Academic Freedom Conference" earlier this month. It featured the usual suspects, all alleging "academic...

PC WC by: Deborah Lambert, January 29, 2008 If you think the level of academic conferences can’t sink any lower, read on. Last fall, New York University offered a day-long seminar titled “Sex, Gender and the Public Toilet: Outing the Water Closet.” Cultural commentator/author Roger Kimball reported that it took four departments to tackle this weighty topic: the Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality, the Department of Media, Culture and Communication, the Center for Religion and Media, and the Council on Media and Culture. Kimball noted that the gathering “brought together pioneering scholars of sex and gender with...

Most at NYU say their vote has a price By: Lily Quateman - Washington Square News November 14, 2007 07:29 PM EST Two-thirds say they'll do it for a year's tuition. And for a few, even an iPod touch will do. That's what NYU students said they'd take in exchange for their right to vote in the next presidential election, a recent survey by an NYU journalism class found. Only 20 percent said they'd exchange their vote for an iPod touch. But 66 percent said they'd forfeit their vote for a free ride to NYU. And half said they'd give...

The beautiful daughter of two NYU professors was killed inside her mother's university apartment - and left to decompose behind the locked door of her bedroom for several days, police sources said. Cops were searching for Boitumelo McCallum's "jealous" boyfriend, according to police sources who described him as the prime suspect in the grisly murder of the intelligent 20-year-old student. -snip- "Everyone is calling, asking for information about this young woman - except her boyfriend. The sense is that he's not calling because he knows what happened," a source said.

NEW YORK // Crammed with Lenin buttons, dusty memos from the McCarthy period, and crumbling pages of internal briefings dating back a century, the 2,000 cardboard boxes handed over to New York University last month hold secrets about the Communist Party USA that make archivist Peter Filardo's heart flutter. ...Last year, Filardo received a phone call from the Communist Party's national chairman, Sam Webb, who told him the organization wanted to donate its archival collection to the Tamiment Library at NYU. The party planned to renovate its headquarters, Webb said, and it no longer had room for the cache, which...

Here's one ally that most people opposed to the airing of Cho's material would surely just as soon do without. In an MSNBC column, Siva Vaidhyanathan claims that NBC News' decision to air the material was unfair to, that's right, Cho the mass murderer. In Material from Killer Should Not Have Aired, Vaidhyanathan does note en passant that the airing "ultimately was disrespectful to the victims and their families." But the lion's share of his column is devoted to complaining that NBC was unfair to Cho and "all severely mentally ill people." We will see sick attempts at humor,...

NEW York University has trumpeted its acquisition of a large cache of materials donated by the Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA) to its Tamiment Library. A front-page New York Times story noted that the gift includes 12,000 cartons filled with documents and photographs from the party's newspaper. A celebratory conference to mark the event tomorrow is filled with party war horses and includes panels extolling the CPUSA's contributions to American society and culture. ... For nearly 70 years - from shortly after its founding in Chicago in 1919 until the collapse of the Soviet Union in...

Does Karen Greenberg believe the United States is involved in a war with Islamist terrorists? Judging by her column in today's Los Angeles Times, The military's Gitmo script, you really have to wonder. Greenberg is executive director of the Center on Law and Security at NYU law school. Her bio there [from whence her photo here comes] indicates that she is a former Vice-President of George Soros' Open Society Institute. Her colleague at the Center, NYU prof Stephen Holmes [pictured here], lists as one of his areas of specialization: "the disappointments of democratization after communism." Ah, remember the good...

Lawyers for an American citizen facing execution in Iraq appealed Friday in U.S. federal court to keep the man in American custody — preventing his death — while another case is being appealed. The citizen, Mohammad Munaf, was convicted and sentenced to death by an Iraqi judge earlier this week on charges he helped in the 2005 kidnapping of three Romanian journalists in Baghdad, court papers show. Iraqi-born Munaf, a naturalized U.S. citizen since 2000, was working as their translator and guide. He maintains his innocence. In an emergency request filed Friday in U.S. District Court in Washington, Munaf's attorneys...

The NYPD hate-crimes unit is probing a report that a white NYU student killed by a car in Harlem was fleeing a gang of black teenagers screaming "Get whitey!" sources said yesterday. If the report proves true, the violence could turn out to be an eerie replay in reverse of the infamous 1986 Howard Beach murder, where a black man was chased into traffic and killed by a group of white bigots. The 20-year-old student, John Broderick Hehman, died yesterday, six days after the attack.

National Gallery, LondonWhistler's portrait of his mother is not included in the new "Janson's History of Art." Top, Tate, London; bequeathed by Arthur Studd, 1919; above, Dawoud Bey/"Janson’s History of Art," Seventh Edition THEY MADE IT Now appearing in "Janson's History of Art": Whistler's "Symphony in White No. 2," top, which replaces the portrait of his mother and shows the Japanese influence on his art; and David Hammon's "Higher Goals," above. In some ways, art history is like an episode of "The Sopranos." A relatively small number of artists are welcomed into the family of the famous, their works...

New York University has set a deadline for its striking graduate student teaching and research assistants to return to work or risk losing their stipends. The university has told its striking students they must return to class and other assignments by next week. If they don't, they will lose their financial stipends and their eligibility to teach next semester. Graduate teaching assistants went on strike November 9th to force NYU to recognize their right to bargain as part of the United Auto Workers Union... For students whose teaching assistants walked out of class, NYU is offering options like taking classes...

New York University is facing a strike next week... on Nov. 9... ...From 2000 until August of this year, about 1,000 teaching and research assistants had been members of local 2110 of the United Automobile Workers. But when their contract expired in August, N.Y.U. said it would no longer recognize a graduate student union. The university's decision followed a policy reversal by the National Labor Relations Board in Washington about whether private universities like N.Y.U. had to allow graduate student workers to unionize... In 2000, as other universities and union organizers watched closely, the national labor board - controlled at...

The personal, commercial and civic desolation left by Hurricane Katrina has inevitably bred comparisons to another scene of unthinkable loss and ruin: lower Manhattan after 9/11. While the recovery effort on the Gulf Coast is unique, one area in which New York's experience provides an example is its support for small business reconstruction. Like Hurricane Katrina, the 9/11 attacks destroyed or crippled thousands of the smallest local businesses and nonprofits... the "soft" infrastructure of any commercial or industrial district.... After 9/11, Seedco became the primary organization assisting these businesses. We tailored a specific response to the challenges faced... Our approach...

...In April, the IFC designated nine universities to provide initial programs, with the goal of "[making] the Center a... 'Public Square' on hallowed ground." "The character of a university," the IFC intoned, "allows for this form of 'sacred space'... in which sensitive, controversial and provocative subjects can be candidly explored, yet in a manner that does not generate political distraction."... [NYU] President... [extolled] today's campuses "as 'modern sanctuaries [committed to] free, unbridled and ideologically unconstrained discourse.'" Hello. Campuses today are indeed "sanctuaries"— but almost exclusively for scholars of liberal-left-radical persuasion. Their "unconstrained discourse" is overwhelming that of rank ideologues— neo-Marxists,...

New York University formally notified the union representing its graduate students yesterday that it would no longer bargain with it. In June, the university said it was moving toward severing its relationship with the five-year-old union when its contract expires on Aug. 31. In a memorandum distributed late yesterday to N.Y.U. students and faculty and in a letter to the union, university officials said they decided not to negotiate a new contract. Jacob J. Lew, N.Y.U.'s executive vice president, said in the memo that grievances filed by the union over issues like who would be assigned as graduate teaching assistants...

Leave it to the New York Times. On the eve of Pentecost, the birthday of the church, this Catholic-baiting newspaper opened its op-ed page to a venomous anti-Catholic rant by Arthur Hertzberg, "a visiting professor of the humanities" at New York University. Hertzberg slandered no fewer than three popes. Not only did the church of Pius XII remain "silent while Europe's Jews were murdered," he alleges, the church of John Paul II taught Catholics that the "sin of letting the Holocaust happen at its doorstep need not haunt the church ..." As for Benedict XVI, formerly Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, he...

Close to 50 NYU law students and members of the New York community lined the sidewalk outside of Vanderbilt Hall yesterday afternoon to protest Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, who was being honored by a student-run law journal. Scalia visited NYU to receive an honor from the members of the NYU Annual Survey of American Law , which is dedicating their 2005 issue to Scalia. Scalia is the subject of controversy for his dissenting opinion in Lawrence v. Texas, in which he criticized the decision to overturn a law that criminalized sodomy. While on the court he voted for the...

The CIA may be accustomed to working under "deep cover" in hostile areas, but one college campus is proving too dangerous for the company's men and women. The campus that makes America's spies tremble is New York University (NYU). As reported by the University of Wisconsin's newspaper, the Badger Herald, out of fear of causing a potential disturbance at New York University, representatives from the United States Central Intelligence Agency declined to visit the campus March 31 because of the likelyhood of ... student protests! Scheduled to appear as part of a project for a marketing class, the CIA declined...

April 14, 2005 -- WHEN U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia spoke Tuesday night at NYU's Vanderbilt Hall, "The room was packed with some 300 students and there were many protesters outside because of Scalia's vitriolic dissent last year in the case that overturned the Texas law against gay sex," our source reports. "One gay student asked whether government had any business enacting and enforcing laws against consensual sodomy. Following Scalia's answer, the student asked a follow-up: 'Do you sodomize your wife?' The audience was shocked, especially since Mrs. Scalia [Maureen] was in attendance. The justice replied that the question...