Free Republic

".....From 1977 to 1990, Lenza served time in Missouri’s State Penitentiary in Jefferson City, also called “The Walls.” He was convicted of murder in 1975 after confessing to killing his first wife and mother-in-law, putting his mother-in-law’s body in a barrel and throwing the barrel into the Mississippi River....."

Professor Kaukab Siddique of Lincoln University thinks the Jews have "taken over America" by "devious and immoral means. What are the limits to academic discourse? Are lies and calumnies from academics protected speech outside the classroom, as well as inside? Does “protected” mean immune from criticism or from direct consequences? Are there distinctions between statements made within one’s “field of expertise” and those made outside? When do such distinctions become hairsplitting rationalizations or mere defensiveness, as opposed to valuable exercises in reasoning and in defense of a noble enterprise? Consider the case of Kaukab Siddique, professor of literature and communications...

Access to accurate and reliable information is vital to a functioning, free society. Media and education have historically been key sources for American ideals to be tested through rigorous debate and thoughtful dialogue. When it comes to youth in America, these institutions are failing. A study by the Center for the Study of Popular Culture which surveyed 32 universities found 1,397 professors registered democrat while only 134 registered republican. 1,891 were unaffiliated. College is the incubator for young minds to grow and develop but with such lopsided bias among teachers, indoctrination is inevitable. Coddling young minds with such bias before...

The last redoubt of concern for the common man is ridiculously awash in the cash that keeps eluding the object of its affections but then, maybe that’s where it comes from. The Almanac of Higher Education shows us that colleges and universities took in about a trillion dollars this year and spent roughly that amount. Most of these institutions have multi-million dollar endowments, even some community colleges. Most parents do not. Professors make about $100,000 a year with tenure while the untenured lecturers and associates range between $45-80,000 a year. Ironically, this is where most share-the- wealth schemes originate. The...

Astonishment as scientist at centre of global warming email row admits vital data was not well organised The academic at the centre of the ‘Climategate’ affair, whose raw data is crucial to the theory of climate change, has admitted that he has trouble ‘keeping track’ of the information. Colleagues say that the reason Professor Phil Jones has refused Freedom of Information requests is that he may have actually lost the relevant papers. Professor Jones told the BBC yesterday there was truth in the observations of colleagues that he lacked organisational skills, that his office was swamped with piles of paper...

During an appearance as the guest speaker at the Oct. 8 meeting of The World Affairs Council of San Antonio, Jeffrey F. Addicott told the story of what happened after U.S. Northern Command issued a plea for help to professors serving at the nation’s 200 law schools: Only one professor replied. Addicott.

Talk about rolling out the welcome mat for new students. Some University of California professors are so peeved that UC's Office of the President has forbidden them from taking furloughs on teaching days that they're planning to walk out on their classes later this month. The date they've chosen - Sept. 24 - is the first day of class at several UC campuses, including UC Davis. Professors advocating for the walkout say they can make political inroads by forcing students to feel the impact of budget cuts prompting the furloughs. "Instructional furloughs pressure the state to cease defunding the UC...

We all know we should be wary of viral videos and forwarded emails or messages -- well, everyone except my dad, unfortunately. (Love you Dad, but you have to be more discerning!) It often turns out that the info imparted is not entirely accurate, if at all.So here's the latest video that was passed on to me by a friend: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=piuoGb-Nhfw As someone who would have loved to have been that student, and fully believes we should never fear  standing up -- I have to report that according to Snopes (yes, I know they're left-leaning, but they're pretty reliable although the snarky...

Unwavering support for Israeli policy has eroded dramatically both on American college campuses and within the United States as a whole, according to a group of American university professors who on Sunday concluded an academic exchange program here, sponsored by the Yitzhak Rabin Center. "The project had been planned for eight months and this is the first group of political science professors to arrive here from America," said Dalia Rabin, daughter of the late prime minister and director of the Rabin Center. "The goal, which I think we accomplished, was to show them the complexities of the issues facing Israel,...

The Publishable Perishable Professoriat by: Daniel Allen, March 31, 2009 The University: An institution for research and scholarship, or an academy for advanced teaching and learning? The best represent both worlds, but worrying trends indicate that undergraduate students are suffering because teachers must devote their attention to inconsequential research rather than the learning of students in the developmental phase of their education. A study, sponsored by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), shows how teachers must focus on research in order to keep their careers, which creates a tradition of neglect toward undergraduates. The study was conducted by Mark Bauerlein of...

In the wake of Operation Cast Lead, a group of American university professors has for the first time launched a national campaign calling for an academic and cultural boycott of Israel. While Israeli academics have grown used to such news from Great Britain, where anti-Israel groups several times attempted to establish academic boycotts, the formation of the United States movement marks the first time that a national academic boycott movement has come out of America. Israeli professors are not sure yet how big of an impact the one-week-old movement will have, but started discussing the significance of and possible counteractions...

Only a professor, preferably a sociology professor, one with way too much time on his hands, could have come up with this one. His solution to the Detroit crisis that has the Big Three automakers on the brink of bye-bye? Unionize their foreign competitors manufacturing in the USA! Now why didn't we think of that? Because we're not Jonathan Cutler, associate professor of sociology at Wesleyan University. His solution in a nutshell, contained in his Los Angeles Times column of today [emphasis added]: "[N]ot to tear down the historic and heroic gains won by prior generations of UAW workers. If...

Some University of Colorado faculty members say they’re saddled by useless rules, and they want school leaders to abandon mandatory information-technology training, tight alcohol policies and an extra layer of tenure review. Members of the Boulder Faculty Assembly’s executive committee on Monday signaled their support for a report that recommends the university revise, or scrap altogether, a batch of its rules — some that came about in the aftermath of controversy and during former CU President Hank Brown’s tenure. When President Bruce Benson went through a vetting process last spring before he was hired, CU employees repeatedly told him in...

We’ll admit it, for being such a leading conservative blog in a red-as-hell Southern state, we haven’t gotten as riled up about the whole Bill Ayers-Barack Obama controversy as we probably should have. Part of our initial disinterest was undoubtedly due to our complete and total lack of enthusiasm for either of the major party candidates in the current U.S. Presidential election, which is the context for Ayers becoming a most undeserving 15-minute celebrity. Given their shared aversion to the market principles on which this nation was built, we frankly want nothing to do with either Barack Obama or John...

More than 400 university professors and academic staff have sent a letter of protest to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, objecting to his veto last month of $5.4 million for a University of California labor research program and asking that the money be restored. At a time when unemployment in California is reaching a level not seen in decades, the letter said, the governor's action appears to be politically motivated and an excuse to ax a program his fellow Republicans have sought to kill. Its critics have said it is too close to unions. "It violates the basic principle of the freedom...

At the University of Chicago no man looms larger than Milton Friedman, the Nobel laureate who led the “Chicago school” of economics and who died in 2006. When the university announced plans for a $200m economics institute in May, it seemed fitting that the centre should be named after him. But a small war broke out. On June 6th more than 100 faculty members wrote to the university’s president to protest against the institute. Armed with academia’s common weapons, indignation and verbosity, they said they were all “disturbed by the ideological and disciplinary preference implied by the university’s massive support...

...Baby boomers, hired in large numbers during a huge expansion in higher education that continued into the ’70s, are being replaced by younger professors who many of the nearly 50 academics interviewed by The New York Times believe are different from their predecessors — less ideologically polarized and more politically moderate ...Solon Simmons at George Mason University found that the notion of a generational divide is more than a glancing impression. “Self-described liberals are most common within the ranks of those professors aged 50-64, who were teenagers or young adults in the 1960s,” they wrote, making up just under 50...

Some Duke professors are challenging the conventional "miles per gallon" terminology employed by the automobile industry. Researchers with Duke's Fuqua School of Business say that posting a vehicle's fuel efficiency in "gallons per mile" rather than "miles per gallon" would help motorists make better decisions when buying a new car. The study will appear in the June 20 issue of Science magazine. It was inspired by a debate professors Richard Larrick and Jack Soll had while carpooling in a hybrid car, according to a Duke press release. The two management professors ran experiments showing current "miles per gallon" terminology led...

One hundred nine historians already nearly unanimously agree. They call the presidency of George W. Bush a "failure." The History News Network (HNN), who polled the historians, failed to name them or where they work. Wonder why? American Enterprise magazine, in 2002, examined voter registrations to determine the political affiliations of humanities professors at an assortment of colleges and universities, public and private, big and small, located in the North, South, East and West. Of those registered with a political party -- and most were -- historians overwhelmingly belong to a "party of the left" (Democratic, Green or Working Families...

Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer is a college professor with a long history of political activism and fearless liberalism.—AP, 5-11-08, profile of candidate for Minn. Dem primary nomination [emphasis added]. Fearless liberalism? Fearless? It's fearless for an American college professor to be a big-time liberal? Give me a fearless break! Yet that's how the AP described the predictably left-wing politics of the man challenging Al Franken for the right to challenge Republican Norm Coleman for his seat in the US Senate. Among Nelson-Pallmeyer's positions: * opposed to the death penalty in all circumstances * suppport nationwide legalization of same-sex marriages * favors a...