Free Republic

The security situation in the Mediterranean will continue to deteriorate to the point where we can expect Islamist raids on European islands, a recently retired Royal Navy Admiral has told Breitbart London. [snip] Rear Admiral Chris Parry CBE, the straight-talking former Director General of the Ministry of Defence Development, Concepts, and Doctrine Centre, ... made the comments in an interview this week as European nations gathered to discuss the sudden migrant crisis gripping the Mediterranean. THE THREAT OF ISLAM Parry, who warned in a government paper in 1990 that Islam would replace Communism as the main threat against the West...

We’ve written quite a bit about Trigger Warnings since before it became fashionable: The fragile college student mind is getting more fragile by the day.As if the normal run of political correctness were not enough, we now have “Trigger Warnings” — the notion that students need to be warned that the material they are about to read in class may “trigger” emotional upset….Of course, how the trigger is defined says much about the theory behind the movement — it almost always serves left-wing critical race and gender theories ….The Trigger Warning movement is all about enforcing a conformity of thought...

Higher education professionals are dismayed at the growing number of students who expect their universities to protect their tender emotions from over-stimulation. If you graduated from college in the previous millennium, you may be unaware that many students now believe that college professors and administrators should protect them from, rather than expose them to, ideas they disagree with, especially ideas that disturb them. Much of the recent debate over the current state of college campuses was spurred by Judith Shulevitz's March 21 op-ed in The New York Times, "In College and Hiding From Scary Ideas." The Brown University campus, Shulevitz...

...'Isis' has been taken off from the formal checklist of names of foreseeable future hurricanes as it was now considered inappropriate mainly because of the eponymous militant group....

A Pittsburgh-area school district is investigating allegations of harassment involving students. Several parents and students from McGuffey High School in Washington County have reached out to Channel 11 News voicing concern about a so-called “Anti-Gay Day” allegedly organized by some students. A group of students allegedly spread the news that if they were “Anti-Gay,” they were to wear a flannel shirt and write “Anti-Gay” on their hands. Below is a statement from Dr. Erica Kolat, the superintendent of McGuffey School District. “Yesterday afternoon, April 16, 2015, allegations of harassment were brought to the attention of our administration. McGuffey School District,...

"....The controversy over the Hugo Awards contains elements of a good dystopian science fiction story. Unfortunately, the media brat-fit over the successful effort to rescue escapist fantasy literature from its political pursuers comes not from the pages of Brave New World but from Slate,Salon, and Entertainment Weekly.Like sports, video games, and cake baking, science fiction strangely finds itself in the crosshairs of ideological killjoys. Perhaps it was only a matter of time and space before the genre obsessed with time and space became a culture-war battlefield.“To many of the people involved in this industry, politics and message trump entertainment or...

When an institution sets out to ban something, more often than not the thing they choose to ban simply reflects back on that institution’s way of thinking. So what does it tell us about the Oxford University Press that they are banning authors from using words that refer to pigs? Yes, you read that correctly. Oxford UP is prohibiting authors from using the words pig, pork, sausage, or other pig-related words because they are afraid of offending Jewish or Muslim readers who consider pigs and pork to be off-limits for religious reasons. Now, I can understand how Oxford UP would...

Surveys find that men in U.S. special operations forces do not believe women can meet the physical and mental demands of their commando jobs, and they fear the Pentagon will lower standards to integrate women into their elite units, according to interviews and documents obtained by The Associated Press. Studies that surveyed personnel found "major misconceptions" within special operations about whether women should be brought into the male-only jobs. They also revealed concerns that department leaders would "capitulate to political pressure, allowing erosion of training standards," according to one document. Some of those concerns were not limited to men, researchers...

The University of Michigan made headlines this week for initially canceling a screening of the blockbuster film American Sniper because some Muslim students said that it being shown would make them feel “unsafe.” The college has since reversed this decision, but it’s not the only time something like this has happened. Here are seven other things that a school or its students have declared hazards to campus safety: 1. Bill Maher When the University of Berkeley announced that Bill Maher would be its graduation speaker last October, more than 6,000 students signed a petition demanding that he be banned because...

Six more female soldiers have qualified to attend Army Ranger School later this month after passing the same physical fitness standards as men, including six pull-ups, 49 push-ups in two minutes, 59 sit-ups in two minutes and a five-mile run in 40 minutes, Army officials said Wednesday. The six additional women, all of them officers, will join at least six other female soldiers who have passed the Ranger Training Assessment Course that qualified them to attend the first gender-integrated Ranger School course that will begin April 20 and last for two months.

Sorry, but a totally “safe space” is actually impossible. A student at Harvard University published an op-ed on Wednesday complaining that her school’s “safe spaces” are just not safe enough. According to Madison E. Johnson, her time spent in the “safe space” was really great at first — there were “massage circles,” “deep conversations,” and “times explicitly delineated for processing and journaling.” But then it all changed.

This is the era in which we are all being drafted in the Culture War. It doesn’t matter if you’re secular or religious, political or apolitical, frat boys or geeks, hipsters or bros. Nobody gets to be neutral or sit on the sidelines, because we’ll all be expected to make our obeisance to the latest politically correct opinion handed down to us by a Twitter mob. By now, we know the basic ingredients of a typical skirmish in Culture War 4.0. It goes something like this: a) a leftist claque starts loudly pushing the “correct” Culture War position onto b)...

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.

The University of North Dakota is looking for suggestions for a new nickname. The school's nickname committee will be accepting submissions beginning Wednesday until the end of the April. The names must be 25 characters or less. The committee says it is looking for nicknames that are unique, promote pride and strength, represent the state and region, honor the traditions and heritage of the past, and can be a unifying and rallying symbol. A consulting group will research the suggestions for any trademark or copyright infringement. The committee will narrow down the choices for a public vote. The school's Fighting...

Hegel's Deity: How Evolution Gave Us Postmodernism, Deconstructionism, and Political Correctness Nancy Pearcey March 27, 2015 5:59 AM | Permalink How has evolution shaped our view of humanity? We often hear that evolution is the key scientific prop for the philosophy of materialism, with its reduction of the human person to a complex biochemical machine. But spiritualized versions of evolution have appeared as well -- for example, in the philosophy of Hegel. In our own day, Hegel's spiritual/cultural view of evolution has led to its own form of reductionism: the postmodern reduction of individuals to social groups based on race,...

Adam Stinnett looks up to his older stepbrother – a soldier in the U.S. Army. So when it came time to get a haircut, the seven-year-old told his mother he wanted a basic military-style cut. And that’s exactly what he got – high and tight – just like his stepbrother. Adam got his haircut on March 8. On March 9, his mother got a letter from the principal of Bobby Ray Memorial Elementary School in McMinnville, Tennessee. It seems they were not all that thrilled with the second grader’s new hairdo. The principal told Amy Stinnett that her son’s haircut...

A high school dance will keep its “American Pride” theme after a debate over concerns that people of other nationalities might feel excluded, the school superintendent said Tuesday.

A Massachusetts high school is having a serious debate over the theme of a scheduled dance. According to WHDH, students at the school in Lexington said that the school administration canceled their ‘American pride’ dance because it may exclude other nationalities. The ‘American pride’ theme received the most votes from the Lexington High School dance committee. Despite this, the administration is standing behind its decision, saying it’s are willing to tweak the theme in order for ‘everyone to be included.’

New York public-school students caught stealing, doing drugs or even attacking someone can avoid suspension under new “progressive” discipline rules adopted this month. Most likely, they will be sent to a talking circle instead, where they can discuss their feelings. Convinced traditional discipline is racist because blacks are suspended at higher rates than whites, New York City’s Department of Education has in all but the most serious and dangerous offenses replaced out-of-school suspensions with a touchy-feely alternative punishment called “restorative justice,” which isn’t really punishment at all. It’s therapy. “Every reasonable effort must be made to correct student behavior through…restorative...

On Nov. 9, 2011, a civilian texted Furminger, “Do you celebrate quanza (sic) at your school?” “Yeah we burn the cross on the field! Then we celebrate Whitemas,” he responded. On May 10, 2012, Furminger wrote to another officer, according to the documents, “I hate to tell you this but my wife friend (sic) is over with their kids and her husband is black! If (sic) is an attorney but should I be worried?” The officer wrote back: “Get ur pocket gun. Keep it available in case the monkey returns to his roots. Its (sic) not against the law to...