Free Republic

On Thursday, the George Washington University's Elliott School of International Affairs shared an article written by the school's Dean, Reuben Brigety, entitled "Donald Trump is a Nazi Sympathizer." In the article, published by Foreign Policy and promoted by the university, Dean Brigety explicitly calls the President of the United States "America's first Nazi-supporting president" and the "Nazi-in-chief." "For the first time in our history, a Nazi sympathizer occupies the Oval Office," Dean Brigety writes. "His comments during a press conference on August 15 in which he spontaneously reiterated his support for white supremacist protesters left the world slack-jawed in disbelief...

There is a distinction between color blindness and absent mindedness. The former is a worthy goal consonant with Dr. King's desire that we judge each other "by the content of our character not the color of our skin." The latter is too frequently on display in academia. "As a white assistant professor of mostly white graduate students who will become higher education leaders, I work to dismantle whiteness in my curriculum, assignments and pedagogy," Jodi L. Linley writes. "I make meaning of my own white identity through my commitment to reflexivity as a constant activity." "Equally salient are my identities...

The Higher Education Establishment insists that its mission is just that. Academic insiders know better. "Activism in this broad sense rules the day in contemporary higher education," Zena Hitz, a tutor at St. John’s College in Annapolis, writes in the summer 2017 issue of Modern Age. "The core purpose of the University of Texas, according to its mission statement, is 'to transform lives for the benefit of society.'" "Education is for the sake of 'social transformation,' says Harvard College--or 'the improvement of the world today,' according to Yale University." Yet and still, conservatives ready to high five each other and...

Guess who doesn't like the Trump Administration's attempt to investigate whether colleges and universities practice racial discrimination in their affirmative action programs? “The Department of Justice has as yet declined to provide details about the new effort,” Hank Reichman of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) averred. "While we hope that any prosecutions will be consistent with current Supreme Court precedents upholding the constitutionality of race-conscious admissions programs, the AAUP will join with other organizations and individuals in higher education to vigorously defend the value of diversity and the rights of faculty and institutions to determine for themselves appropriate...

NEW BRUNSWICK-- Undergraduate students at Rutgers University's New Brunswick campus will see a 1.85 percent increase in tuition and fees this fall, or an extra $266 on their annual bill. The average in-state undergraduate on the New Brunswick campus will pay $14,638 in annual tuition and fees in the 2017-2018 under a plan approved by the school's Board of Governors. Rutgers is also hiking the cost of room and board by 1.5 percent. Including housing, the total bill for the average New Brunswick undergraduate from New Jersey will be $27,090, a 1.7 percent increase from the previous year.

Since we started reporting on it last year, Trump Derangement Syndrome has, if anything, surpassed epidemic proportions, starting in the Faculty Lounge. Speaking of which, in our faculty lounge blog roll, we have shown reports from Campus Reform that in the past two months: • Subini Annamma, a professor at the University of Kansas, tweeted that Trump supporters are "deeply invested in white supremacy;" • After a Bernie Sanders supporter shot U. S. Rep. Steve Scalise, R-La., Central Connecticut State University professor Jerold Duquette argued that "mentally unstable people drawn to political extremism" would be motivated to do "horrible things"...

So-called "microaggressions" are becoming so integral to our Zeitgeist that university researchers are now tracking them scientifically, or at least pseudo-scientifically. "Female athletes long have experienced microaggressions from the media and the public, such as racism, sexism, the belittling of athletic accomplishments and being the brunt of sexual jokes," the University of Missouri News Bureau claims. "Now, researchers at the University of Missouri School of Journalism have found that microaggressions against female athletes in the media increased by nearly 40 percent from the 2012 Summer Olympic Games to the 2016 Summer Olympic Games." "Cynthia Frisby, an associate professor of strategic...

Here are 115 books the NAS recommends for colleges and universities with common reading programs. The first list contains 80 books appropriate in level of difficulty and length for any college freshman. The second list contains 30 more ambitious choices... Recommended Books for More Ambitious College Common Reading Programs MATTHEW ARNOLD – CULTURE AND ANARCHY (1869) The point of culture is the pursuit of perfection; the uncultured are mere Philistines. Arnold eloquently articulates the High Victorian ideal of culture as singular and normative—a valuable corrective to the modern view of culture as plural and descriptive. Students will learn to consider...

Administrators at the University of Arizona are now accepting applications for “social justice advocates,” whose job it is to snitch on other students accused of bias. They’re also expected to hold educational programs about “the mosaic of diversity, multiculturalism and inclusivity” and maintain “social justice bulletin boards” in student residence halls.

Peg Orcutt, a resident of Madison, Wisc., painted a dismal, black-and-blue horizon entitled “The Sky Is Falling.” Orcutt is selling her portrait, which depicts her “dismay over the results of the 2016 presidential election and my concern for the future of the country” for $2,000. A third painting shows a seemingly pregnant woman sexually penetrated with an oil pipeline, reported MacIver Institute.

A group of students at American University labeling themselves the “AU Justice League” have taken credit for ripping down anti-abortion flyers on campus. The campus’s College Republicans put the flyers up Wednesday night, and called for the defunding of Planned Parenthood. But by Thursday morning, the vast majority of the flyers had disappeared. It didn’t take long to figure out why. At 12:30 a.m., the Twitter account @AUJusticeLeague tweeted a photo of dozens of crumpled-up flyers with the caption “We had some fun with the college republican posters tonight. Let us know if we missed any guys!” The incident was...

On Thursday’s broadcast of “The Laura Ingraham Show,” Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) said, “I think that Congress, and the people who appropriate the money, we should think about whether or not we should be sending money to universities that only have one set of speech.” When asked if he thought the “federal government, Donald Trump” could “impound” funds that would go a place like UC-Berkeley, Rand answered, “I think if it were a liberal president, and they were shutting down speech, they could probably do it. I don’t think that — I don’t think impounding funds is probably going to...

The New York Times today publishes an extraordinary column, titled: What ‘Snowflakes’ Get Right About Free Speech. In it, Ulrich Baer, the vice provost for faculty, arts, humanities, and diversity at New York University argues at length that what liberal snowflake students who want to censor “offensive” ideas get right about free speech is, basically, everything. The gist of his argument is that some propositions are so dehumanizing to the affected people that they are impossible to rebut with equal humanity and legitimacy. He invokes such clashes a Holocaust deniers, racists, or opponents of illegal immigration confronting Holocaust survivors or...

A leading researcher on a ridiculed taxpayer-funded study of duck penises is now using her expertise on orca whales and is going to the "March for Science" to protest budget cuts. Patricia Brennan, a visiting lecturer at Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts, worked on the duck penis study that received $384,949 from the National Science Foundation, a grant that was funded through the 2009 stimulus package. The study looked at the differences in the corkscrew-shaped penises of ducks.

The professor who tweeted “Trump must hang” and that two Republicans should be executed for each immigrant deported is taking a paid leave of absence for the rest of the spring semester. Professor Lars Maischak of California State University, Fresno agreed upon the leave of absence with the university

"Diversity statements" are used by universities in Oregon to weed out conservative and other right-leaning scholars at universities, a new report issued by the Oregon Association of Scholars (OAS) alleges. Per the report, the universities in Oregon (University of Oregon, Oregon State University, Portland State University, and Oregon Health and Science University) use a new kind of litmus test to single out conservative scholars: diversity statements. The report’s executive summary reads, as follows: Oregon colleges and universities have begun to impose requirements for prospective and current faculty to show their commitment to the partisan ideology of "diversity, equity, and inclusion."...

New York’s Columbia University announced last week it is hiring a full time “Coordinator of Muslim Life” to provide guidance and support to the Muslim community and opening up prayer space for all Muslims year round. This comes on the heels of heated demands and a petition from the Muslim Student Association (MSA), stating an advisor and prayer room is a necessity for the Muslim community because “hateful Islamophobic rhetoric” and “anti-Muslim violence” is putting the “entire community under enormous risk, stress, and insecurity.”

Students at Duquesne University are petitioning their school to reconsider a plan to bring Chick-fil-A to campus, arguing the fast-food restaurant’s support for traditional marriage would create an unsafe environment for gay students. . . . Rachel Coury, president of the Duquesne gay-straight alliance, said she fears Chick-fil-A will roll back efforts to create a safe environment for gay students on campus. “I’ve tried very hard within the last semester and a half to promote this safe environment for the LGBTQ+ community,” Ms. Coury told The Duke. “So I fear that with the Chick-fil-A … maybe people will feel that...

Whether it is female Republican students at places like St. Olaf College and Cornell University being accosted, cursed at, threatened with physical violence and, in the latter case, actually assaulted; Cal State Fullerton Trump supporting students being assaulted by an instructor; a riot at Berkeley; or College Republicans being targeted by name as “fascists” and encouragements made to make their personal information public so that decent folks can “punch fascists”—bullying, intimidation, and threats of violence against conservative students have become staples of campus life.  While this phenomenon is an outrage in itself, equally outrageous is the fact that it has...

A discussion scheduled for later this month at California State University San Marcos appears slated to delve into the wild world of animal-based sex fetishes. The event, “Furries Vs. Pet Play,” is one among many slated as the campus marks “gAyPRIL,” billed on the school’s website as a monthlong campuswide celebration of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, questioning and ally community. . . . “Pet play,” on the other hand, is described online as a subculture within the BDSM world in which a person likes to pretend to be an animal and engages in submissive and other animal-like behaviors in...