Free Republic

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...

About the scholarship itself, received twelve years ago? Probably not. But the ways in which Vivek Ramaswamy has tried to disentangle himself from the indirect connection to George Soros may offer some reasons to consider just what kind of politician Ramaswamy is, and will be.The story has floated to the top of the chum in the waters of the 2024 GOP presidential primary, especially among Ramaswamy’s opponents. In 2011, Ramaswamy took $90,000 to pay tuition for Yale Law School from the Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans. Paul Soros was the late older brother of George Soros, the...

In his famous 1950 Hillel House lectures, “Jerusalem and Athens,” Leo Strauss laid a vision of what he saw as a fundamental (but complimentary) tension between Jerusalem and Athens or between Scripture and philosophy. While Christian theologians might disagree with Strauss’s approach, and scholars and laymen alike might argue for a more inclusive vision of the sources of Western civilization, Strauss is at least right no note that Western civilization as we know it would be inconceivable without Greek philosophy and the Bible. Indeed, in the contemporary attempt to cancel, modify, and, in some cases, abolish Western civilization, the classics,...

Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs this week indicated that she would be moving to route tens of millions of dollars in state funding to scholarships for illegal immigrants after securing re-election in November. In her inaugural address this week, Hobbs said that as governor she will work to "create the Promise for DREAMers Scholarship Program to cover all students, regardless of immigration status, who attend a public university."Specifically, Hobbs said her budget "allocates $40 million to create the Promise for DREAMers Scholarship Program to cover all students, regardless of immigration status."The governor said this proposal was "in line with the will...

Five years ago, the Excelsior Scholarship became the first in the nation to cover four years of tuition without being tethered to academic performance. Still, many students who could qualify don't apply. Even though college enrollment has slid since the start of the Covid pandemic, many students still want to get a degree, and for some, free tuition programs are the only way to make higher education a reality. In 2017, the state of New York's Excelsior Scholarship made headlines when it became the first in the nation to cover four years of tuition without being tethered to academic performance....

The best universities in the world are supposed to be bastions of scientific reasoning. Instead, during the pandemic, they instituted policies that are at odds with basic principles of public health. This includes, unfortunately, Stanford University, where I am an international graduate student in the PhD program in Physics. This spring, Stanford instituted a requirement that all students be vaccinated or else face an "enrollment hold" which restricts their ability to complete classes, progress on degrees, get financial aid or even live on campus. Though the university was not explicit, these restrictions on the unboosted amount to effective expulsion from...

Rep. Karen Bass (D-CA), who launched a campaign for Los Angeles mayor in September, received a $95,000 “scholarship” while in Washington from the University of Southern California, which is currently embroiled in a bribery scandal.

LSU gymnast Olivia Dunne, who checks in with over 1.1 million Instagram followers and 3.9 million TikTok followers, might end up being the biggest winner in the Name, Image, Likeness sweepstakes that officially went into law across over a dozen states at midnight Thursday morning. And Dunne was sitting there, ready to cash in without jeopardizing her college scholarship. “NIL rules change tomorrow… let’s get to work,” Dunne tweeted Wednesday, knowing she was about to make a life-changing fortune when the clock struck midnight. Sports business reporter Darren Rovell has predicted that Dunne could sign deals this week worth $100k,...

FAYETTEVILLE, N.C. (WTVD) -- On May 25, it will mark exactly one year since George Floyd was murdered and his family and their foundation are doing everything they can to honor his legacy. The George Floyd Memorial Foundation presented Fayetteville State University with a $25,000 scholarship on the university campus Friday morning. Bridgett Floyd, George's sister, and several other local family members were in attendance when Bridgett presented the check to Chancellor Darrell T. Allison. "I believe in making change for those around you, near you, far away," Bridgett said. She tells ABC11 this scholarship will be a stepping stone...

One Nigerian teenager must feel like she has the world at her feet after receiving 19 full-ride scholarship offers from universities across the United States and Canada. Victory Yinka-Banjo, a 17-year-old high school graduate, was offered more than $5 million dollars' worth of scholarship money for an undergraduate program of study, according to admission documents and estimates of financial aid awards. Other US scholarship offers included those from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Stanford University, Johns Hopkins University and the University of Virginia.

Tucker Carlson slammed Utah's Republican governor Spencer Cox on "Tucker Carlson Tonight" for supporting a college scholarship program created by the NBA's Utah Jazz, that discriminates prospective students based on race. CARLSON: We have talked a lot about identity politics on the show. Not because we want to talk about an ugly subject. Race is an ugly subject. It’s not resolvable. There is a lot to say about it. It’s just a fact. Obsessing over it gets you nowhere. The left is obsessed with tribalism—dividing people in little groups by what they look like, dehumanizing them and treating them not...

If you’d asked me to identify which major European country was seeing powerful intellectual and political forces attacking woke racial ideology and the American campuses pushing it, I would have guessed Poland or Russia. Nope, It’s a country American conservatives generally mock and resent: France. The very same France that conservatives regularly deride as “cheese-eating surrender monkeys,” picking up a line from The Simpsons that was popularized by Jonah Goldberg (who has since gone full NeverTrump).But Norimitsu Ohnishi of The New York Times reports:The threat is said to be existential. It fuels secessionism. Gnaws at national unity. Abets Islamism. Attacks...

A Canadian teenager just took first place in a global science competition for her brilliant explanation of quantum tunneling.Maryam Tsegaye lives in Fort McMurray—a city that hit headlines for devastating reasons in 2016, when 88,000 people were forced from their homes due to wildfire.Now, thanks to her ability to explain tricky quantum physics theory with ease, this 17-year-old has taken top prize at the sixth annual international Breakthrough Junior Challenge.The challenge is a science video competition where young people showcase their knowledge of scientific principles in various fields.In a three-minute explainer, Maryam likened the behavior of electrons to how her...

istory is the account of vast social movements and cultural changes. To be sure, individuals play their part. But they are usually understood to be products of their times. The Reformation, though, whose five-hundredth anniversary we observe this year and whose impact on not only the church but the world has been monumental, was largely precipitated by one man: Martin Luther. Yes, vast social movements and cultural changes were at work in sixteenth-century Europe. But Luther caused many of them, such as the educational explosion that would lead to universal literacy, the rise of the middle class, and eventually democratic...

Through the tumultuous months of COVID-19 and protests following the death of George Floyd, we have seen the worst in humanity. Every so often, however, a story breaks through the mainstream media of the very best in humanity. One teenager in Buffalo, New York gives us hope for the future. 18-year-old Antonio Gwynn felt compelled to help his community after watching some of the destruction that occurred during protests on Facebook Live. In the middle of the night, at 2 am, Gwynn went to the vandalized town with cleaning supplies and spent the next 10 hours undoing the mess left...

Department of Justice Office of Public Affairs FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Tuesday, November 26, 2019 United States Files Brief Explaining That Maryland Improperly Excluded Christian School From Scholarship Program The Department of Justice and the U.S. Department of Education today filed a Statement of Interest in federal court in Maryland, explaining that the Maryland State Department of Education discriminated against Bethel Christian Academy when it excluded the school from its BOOST Scholarship program due to the school’s beliefs regarding marriage and gender set forth in its Parent-Student Handbook. The United States’ brief explains that the school is likely to succeed...

A new analysis by The College Fix this week reveals that the federal Truman Scholarship was only awarded to leftist students in 2018. None of the 59 recipients identified as a conservative American. The Harry S. Truman Scholarship Foundation offers $30,000 scholarships to promising high school students who pledge to spend three years after graduation in public service. The federal scholarship is awarded to 59 students each year. “We identify young people at an important inflection point in their development—when they are college juniors—and recognize and reward their commitments to devote themselves to public service,” the scholarship’s website reads. According...

Gov. Ron DeSantis’ participation in the Martin Luther King Jr. Day events last month at Piney Grove Boys Academy was a blessing for our small K-12 private school in Lauderdale Lakes. His call to expand educational choice opportunities for families showed that somebody is listening and understands our plight. Combined, we spent nearly a half-century as educators in Broward County public schools. When First Baptist Church Piney Grove Pastor, Rev. Derrick J. Hughes, asked us to set up the boys academy, we knew little of school choice.

Just a few decades ago, there were no living speakers of Wampanoag, the native tongue of the Cape Cod–based Mashpee Wampanoag tribe. (Their ancestors famously shared a meal with the Pilgrims, 400 years ago.) Then, in 1993, Jessie Little Doe Baird, who was then in her 20s, had a series of dreams about her ancestors, she told Yankee magazine. They were speaking to her, but she couldn’t understand them. A prophecy known to the tribe said that their lost language would come back when they were ready for it, revived by the children of those who had broken the language...

Video games are going varsity. In some ways, they're like typical college athletes. They're on varsity teams. They train for hours between classes. Some get hefty scholarships. But instead of playing sports, they're playing video games. On college campuses, varsity gaming teams with all the trappings of sports teams are becoming increasingly common as schools tap into the rising popularity of competitive gaming. After initially keeping its distance, even the NCAA is now considering whether it should play a role. Fifty U.S. colleges have established varsity gaming teams over the past three years, often offering at least partial scholarships and...