Free Republic

The White House Office of the Press Secretary For Immediate Release May 23, 2013 Background Briefing by Senior Administration Officials on the President's Speech on Counterterrorism Via Conference Call 12:03 P.M. EDT MS. HAYDEN: Hi, guys. Thanks for joining, and apologies for a slight delay. We're here talking today about the speech the President is about to give at 2:00 p.m. at National Defense University on counterterrorism. This call is on background, attributable to senior administration officials. This call is embargoed until 2:00 p.m. when the President speaks. We actually don't have a lot of time so we'll go ahead...

A man reported to be a serving soldier is dead and two people have been shot in Woolwich, south east London, after what Sky sources understand is being treated as a terrorist attack. Downing Street has called a meeting of the Government's Cobra emergency committee after the incident in John Wilson Street, which David Cameron described as "truly shocking". Sky sources understand that senior police officers believe the killing was likely to be a politically-motivated Islamist terrorist attack. Dozens of weapons - including a number of knives - and pools of blood could be seen on the ground, where a...

As families celebrate graduation around the country, former Secretary of Education William J. Bennett asks if this is really cause to celebrate. He and coauthor David Wilezol discuss their book Is College Worth It?: A Former United States Secretary of Education and a Liberal Arts Graduate Expose the Broken Promise of Higher Education with National Review Online’s Kathryn Jean Lopez. KATHRYN JEAN LOPEZ: “Students pay $100,000 or more for what they could get for almost nothing. With new technology and online breakthroughs, you could get a better education in a coffee shop or your parents’ basement than you will get...

Last week, Yale announced that its student health plan will cover sex-reassignment surgery for students, deeming it an important part of “equal-access” health care. This might shock anyone who doesn’t follow academia, but I wasn’t the least bit surprised. This is just the latest of seemingly endless efforts by colleges to accommodate the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) student community. “We hope that this represents a commitment to catch up to our peers in terms of offering transgender students an equitable student life and health care experience,” Gabriel Murchison, a member of Yale’s Resource Alliance for Gender Equity, told...

Duke University plans to raise its student fees in order pay for students' sex reassignment surgery. Duke University recently made the decision to raise student fees in order add sex-reassignment surgery to their healthcare plan. The private university, located in North Carolina, follows Brown and other universities in offering coverage for the controversial operation. Administrators say they will cover the cost of the reassignment surgery up to $50,000 that will be covered with a cause a 0.3 percent increase to overall student fees. LGBT advocates on campus immediately celebrated the university’s decision.

The federal government gave out more than $40 billion for research and development (R&D) to universities across the country in fiscal 2011. Universities depend heavily on federal funding, with many of the top programs relying on the government for more than 60% of their R&D budgets. As a result, many research program directors fear that the federal cuts promoted by the sequester will hurt future funding. A few of the top schools received a disproportionate share of the governmentÂ’s spending on grants for R&D. Of all 896 schools that received federal money for R&D, approximately 20% of those funds went...

After sternly warning college students to stop harassing his wife or they would face consequences, former Rep. Allen West, R-Fla., now finds himself the target of a complaint.

<p>A University of Buffalo professor was apparently so incensed by a campus display erected by a group of pro-life students that she engaged in a profanity-laden rant which attracted the attention of the authorities. Being lectured by the police to tone down her tirade apparently incensed the professor even more and she proceeded to rage against the pro-life students’ display with even more vitriol. The event, captured on a student’s cell phone, ends when the authorities detain the professor.</p>

President Obama and I were college classmate at Columbia University, class of ’83. I know all too well how mindlessly liberal the students and faculty of that institution can be, and Barack Obama is certainly no exception. My time at Columbia made it crystal clear: liberals always believe they are morally superior. While they publicly state that their mission is to save the world from prejudice, patriotism, racism, greed, and inequality, they are, in fact, hostile and resentful towards anyone who has achieved self-made success through American values. It is in this cesspool of intolerance that Obama and his Marxist...

Howard University student to Sen. Rand Paul: ".... You say you want to provide a government that leaves us alone. Quite frankly, I don’t want that. I want a government that is going to help me. I want a government that is going to help me fund my college education. I want a government that won’t define me by my FAFSA or by my family’s income. I’m a dollar sign with a heartbeat in this nation. This society is a mirror image of Capitol Hill. Do you, Senator Rand Paul, have a solution to come up with new American values...

What was Rand Paul, a white Republican senator from Kentucky, doing at Howard University, a mostly black campus in Washington DC? Asking black Americans to give conservatism a second look. Paul acknowledged that some people thought he was crazy to speak to a largely democratic group, who were probably part of the 93% of blacks who re-elected President Barack Obama in 2012. He joked: "My response is that my trip will be a success if the Hilltop [the campus newspaper] will simply print that a Republican came to Howard, but he came in peace." The rest of his speech wasn't...

In the name of tolerance, of course. At least a dozen students, including seniors Damian Legacy and Blake Bergen, say they have left the Newman Center in the last several years because Father Greg ShafferÂ’s strong anti-gay and anti-abortion views are too polarizing. Shaffer, a Roman Catholic priest, has spent five years preaching to GWU students.The former Newman Center members are creating a video with testimony from 10 other Catholic students, who cite Shaffer as the reason they left the chapel, hoping to inflame a largely liberal campus and force University administrators to act. Legacy and Bergen also plan to...

RUSH: Melissa Harris-Perry is a professor. I believe she's at Tulane. It's a major university, wherever she teaches. She's an African-American professor at Tulane. That's right. She also has a show on PMSNBC. Of course they've got this slogan over there called "Lean Forward" or some such thing. Hosts of their shows are cutting promos that they run on the network, and last week they began airing a new Lean Forward promo for her show, which airs on the weekends. This is that promo. HARRIS-PERRY: We have never invested as much in public education as we should have because we've...

COLUMBUS, April 3, 2013 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A pro-life group that shows graphic images of aborted babies says it had its display vandalized at Ohio State University on Tuesday. Created Equal, which is based in Columbus, posted a video on YouTube of an angry college-aged woman tearing down its signs while shouting population control slogans. “You want an overpopulated earth?” she asked, as she tore apart a series of freestanding posters. “You want to keep on paying taxes for babies that are born to crackheads? Do you really want that? Do you really want a population of people that were born...

IN 12th grade, my friend Ryan and I were finalists for the Silver State Scholars, a competition to identify the “Top 100” seniors in Nevada. The finalists were flown to Lake Tahoe for two days of interviews. On the plane, Ryan and I met a boy from Las Vegas. Looking to size up the competition, we asked what high school he went to. He said a name we didn’t recognize and added, “It’s a magnet school.” Ryan asked what a magnet school was, and spent the remaining hour incredulously demanding a detailed account of the young man’s educational history: his...

Dr. Deandre Poole, the vice chairman of the Palm Beach County Democratic Party, was teaching a class at Florida Atlantic University and told his students to write Jesus on a piece of paper and then place it on the ground and stomp on it. Notice he didn't have them write Muhammad on that piece of paper, hmmm....I wonder why? What he didn't count on, and neither did the school, was that someone would have the temerity to actually have a problem with stomping on Jesus. That student, Ryan Rotela, complained. What did the school do? They told Ryan not to...

A Florida academic institution that had a professor tell his students to write the name Jesus on paper and trample on it has issued a formal apology for the lesson. "This exercise will not be used again. The University holds dear its core values. We sincerely apologize for any offense this caused," said Florida Atlantic University, a multi-campus institution, in a prepared statement posted on its website. "Florida Atlantic University respects all religions and welcomes people of all faiths, backgrounds and beliefs." FAU also stated that "no students were forced to take part in the exercise" and "that no student...

A group of Tennessee lawmakers is preparing to issue an ultimatum to the University of Tennessee-Knoxville – either defund the first-ever “Sex Week” or they will defund the university. Lawmakers, alumni, and taxpayers are furious that the university allocated nearly $20,000 to fund a week-long salute to sex that included a poetry-reading lesbian bondage expert, a campus-wide condom scavenger hunt and seminars on—among other things – oral sex and lesbian erotica. “We should be teaching these children what is important to learn so they can get jobs,” state Sen. Stacey Campfield told Fox News. “I don’t know what jobs they...

Students were well known for their strong opinions at the time, and in that fashion not much has changed. Universities are still a place where feelings are expressed, points of view stated, and every side is convinced, without a doubt, that they are right. Groups gather with home-made signs and shout chants that are spun from the issues at hand. They want their voices heard, and they should. That, within itself, is not the topic of my thoughts today, but rather the disturbing lack of knowledge and education on the subjects for which they speak and protest that seems to...

India’s estimated 3,300 business schools churn out tens of thousands of management graduates each year. But only a small fraction of them are “employable,” or possess basic skills necessary to work in sectors ranging from marketing to finance, according to an unpublished study. B-School graduates are finding out the hard way. Hitesh Kumar, who completed his MBA from a business school in Allahabad, in the state of Uttar Pradesh, earlier this year, has been unable to find a job as an investment banker. ............... Aspiring Minds based its conclusions on a so-called “employability test” it conducted on 32,000 MBA graduates...

Gay rights activists are demanding Tim Tebow back out of a speaking engagement at Liberty University just two weeks after pressuring the New York Jets quarterback to cancel a speaking engagement at the First Baptist Church of Dallas. Tebow is expected to speak this weekend at Wildfire – a men’s conference hosted by the conservative Christian university. His remarks will be closed to the general public. The professional football player is well-known for sharing his faith in Christ – but in recent weeks he’s come under fire from the national media and gay rights activists for speaking in churches...

Times Higher Education has released its 2013 World Reputation Rankings, which are based on the world's largest invitation-only academic opinion survey "to provide the definitive list of the top 100 most powerful global university brands." Although the reputation rankings aren't as objective as their annual World University Rankings — which employs 13 carefully calibrated performance indicators — the brand evaluation is based on "the expert judgement of senior, published academics." Australia stepped up to the world stage as it now has six universities represented in the top 100 while the UK has lost three institutions from the world top 100...

The head of a conservative student organization at DePaul University has been sanctioned by the university and could be expelled after he released the names of vandals who destroyed a pro-life flag display. Kristopher Del Campo, the chairman of the Young Americans for Freedom chapter, was found guilty by the university on two counts – “Disorderly, Violent, Intimidating or Dangerous Behavior to Self or Others” and “Judicial Process Compliance.” The charges were a result of posting a copy of the university’s incident report on the YAF’s website.

When the government is in the business of handing out money, interest groups lobby to get it — or advocate to receive more than they are already getting. So it is with spending on higher education. As the Michigan Legislature debates the state budget for the upcoming fiscal year, more money for preschool, college and everything in between is being proposed. Over the long-term, the funding for those areas has increased dramatically. Taxpayers should be skeptical of the current reasons for subsidizing universities further. Requests for more higher education funding is reported willingly in the media: It’s the "most important...

East Carolina University (ECU) has launched a new campaign that attempts to pressure employees to affirm homosexuality despite their religious and moral objections to the lifestyle. Couched in the language of safety and inclusion, the program promises to brand as intolerant those who refuse to accept the university's official position on matters of private sexual morality. This is especially problematic, given that ECU is a public university. The campaign was launched with a profoundly unwise email, sent by university employee Summer Wisdom under the subject line "Gay? Fine by me." She begins: "This spring the LGBT Resource Office (Lesbian, Gay,...

Students at University of Missouri don't need to cram for exams that fall on Wiccan and Pagan holidays, now that the school has put them on par with Christmas, Thanksgiving and Hanukah. The university’s latest “Guide to Religions: Major Holidays and Suggested Accommodations” — designed to help faculty know when and when not to schedule exams and other student activities — lists eight Wiccan and Pagan holidays and events right alongside more mainstream occasions. It's all part of the school's effort to include everyone's beliefs, although some critics say listing every holiday associated with fringe belief systems is a bit...

The University of Wisconsin – Superior (UWS) is sponsoring a campaign that teaches students it is “unfair” to be white, a university spokesperson confirmed to Campus Reform last Wednesday. A poster produced by the Unfair Campaign. The controversial project, named the “Unfair Campaign,” exists to teach students that “systems and institutions are set up for us [whites]” and as such are “unfair.” The campaign’s slogan, as it appears on its official website, is “it’s hard to see racism when you’re White.” The project disseminates its controversial message through an aggressive campaign of online videos, billboards, and lectures. Posters produced by...

A residence hall at the University of Illinois has invited Annie Sprinkle, a famous porn star from the 1970s and 80s, to conduct a sex education week, which is set to culminate with an “Orgasm Workshop” Thursday night. Annie Sprinkle, a former porn star, will be teaching an "Orgasm Workshop" at Illinois University Thursday night. Sprinkle plans to play students her documentary “Annie Sprinkle’s Amazing World of Orgasm” which features interviews with 26 “orgasm experts” and describes itself as a ”poetic homage to the big O.” Laura Haber, the program director for Unit One, the resident community that is hosting...

MUCH is being written about the preposterously high cost of college. The median inflation-adjusted household income fell by 7 percent between 2006 and 2011, while the average real tuition at public four-year colleges increased over that period by over 18 percent. Meanwhile, the average tuition for just one year at a four-year private university in 2011 was almost $33,000, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. College tuition has increased at twice the rate of health care costs over the past 25 years. Ballooning student loan debt, an impending college bubble, and a return on the bachelor’s degree that...

"I heart female orgasm" is a public event taking place at the University of Minnesota to teach young women and girls enrolled in the school how to achieve and improve their orgasms. Yes, you heard me right. "Sex Week" at Yale and now this. There is only one way to combat this insanity. Minnesota parents need to threaten to withhold their tuition payments until this ceases. Do college students really need this class? Women have been having orgasms since time immemorial and learned it all on their own without the aid of university classes. If someone has problems in this...

In fifty years, if not much sooner, half of the roughly 4,500 colleges and universities now operating in the United States will have ceased to exist. The technology driving this change is already at work, and nothing can stop it. The future looks like this: Access to college-level education will be free for everyone; the residential college campus will become largely obsolete; tens of thousands of professors will lose their jobs; the bachelor’s degree will become increasingly irrelevant; and ten years from now Harvard will enroll ten million students.

A public university plans to offer a course this spring on “sibling incest in theory and literature,” Campus Reform learned on Tuesday. According to the University of Missouri’s official description, the class will “examine the deployment of erotic desire, love, and sympathy as political, economic, and textual strategies, and analyze the gender dynamics involved in such deployment.”

SIGN YOUR PROTEST HERE On January 17, Santa Clara University will welcome Amy Tan, a novelist who has made no secret of her support for abortion “rights,” as well as the unfettered use of contraceptives. Ms. Tan has used her novels as a means to promulgate erroneous opinions, with abortion featuring prominently in one of her books, The Joy Luck Club. Additionally, Ms. Tan has not shied away from announcing her anti-Catholic position. In a public Facebook post sprinkled with obscenities, she harangued pro-life politicians, accusing them of “wanting to pervert the lives of women.”  (Warning: foul language) However, Santa...

Three terrorists imprisoned in Israel filed an appeal to the Supreme Court on Tuesday over a Prison Services decision to stop providing them the opportunity to earn an academic degree while in jail. Previously terrorists were allowed to take university courses in prison, a benefit that was taken away last year as part of an effort to pressure Hamas to agree to a deal to release Gilad Shalit. Terrorists say their conditions should be identical to those of non-terrorist prisoners, who are allowed to pursue university studies...

It's not that top universities are telling people directly to homeschool their kids. Instead, top schools are using a selection process that gives homeschooled kids a huge advantage. Here's why: 1. Good grades are a commodity, so they don't help in the admissions process. Girls are doing so much better than boys in both standard high school courses and in standardized tests that their good grades and good scores don't get girls into good colleges. It's not enough anymore. White girls especially need a hook. A hook is, ironically, something you are passionate about and engaged in that is outside...

Often we find that what is most revealing in covering the higher education beat is what academics reveal about themselves. What follows are vignettes and observations from the Ivory Tower this year: Agents of Inaccuracy November 27, 2012 “Despite the fact that more than half of faculty members say on surveys that an important goal for undergraduate instruction is to ‘encourage students to become agents of social change,’ colleges don’t have much of an effect on student political participation.” —Canadian sociologist Neil Gross The Road to Self-Esteem… November 14, 2012 “It’s healthy to make God look like you. It’s a...

And for a 'grassy strip' adjacent to 'new parking lot' Latest news out of the communist stronghold known as the University of Chicago -you know, same U of C that made Bill Ayers a professor and found Obama a faux teaching gig to pad his micron-thin resume- is that a childhood home to young Ronald Reagan is about to be leveled so the University can build -get ready for it- 'a grassy strip' next to a new parking lot... All of Ronald Reagan's formative years, from birth until he landed his first job across the Mississippi 21 years later,...

When you think about it, it's amazing that the high-minded swells at the University of California didn't unveil a new logo sooner. The old logo, which will continue to appear on diplomas and official letters, features the school motto, "Let there be light." Ancient. An English translation of a Latin phrase. And a book. Dead-tree lit. 1868? Dead white guys. Under a star. Too militaristic. But it wasn't political correctness that relegated the old UC seal to the dusty top shelf reserved for weighty documents only. The new logo, explained UC spokesman Steve Montiel, is "an operational thing." The seal...

A major public university hosted an event last Wednesday which was aimed at teaching students how to properly use sex toys. The University of California – Merced (UCM) sponsored the event, entitled “Is There a Buzz in Your Bed,” which had the stated goal of teach students about “various sex toys” and different ways “to play as a couple or alone.”

Michigan is home to 13 colleges that severely or excessively limit freedom of speech, legal equality or religious liberty, according to a legal foundation. The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) runs an online database listing the "state of liberty" at colleges across the country. Ten of the 13 Michigan colleges received a "red light" rating, meaning they have at least one policy that the group says severely limits free speech. Three colleges received a “yellow light” rating, which means they have excessive limits on expression. "Public universities have a legal obligation under the First Amendment to uphold a...

Many of my friends and readers are disheartened by recent cultural and political trends. Many blame our universities and wonder whether we can ever restore sanity in our nation, given that the enemy seems to control the modern university. They see no chance to win in the war of ideas as long as they are forced to support the public university and, therefore, forced to fund a war against their own cherished values. But I know something they don't know. The public university that has declined so steadily in recent years will cease to exist in just a few short...

Cheers erupted Tuesday evening at the University of California Irvine (UCI) as the school’s student senate passed a resolution, 16-0, accusing Israel of “human rights abuse and institutionalized structural violence against the Palestinian people.” The resolution was passed just hours before Israeli warplanes began an air offensive on Wednesday against Hamas terrorist infrastructure in the Gaza strip in retribution for sustained attacks rocket attacks on Israeli civilian populations.

"When you hear a group of people described as 'bigoted,' 'prejudiced', 'haters' or something similar, you would be wise to ask a test question. Raise your hand and ask, 'Bigotry has been generally frowned upon for decades. Clearly, bigotry is not in anyone's self-interest. So why would these people be bigoted if it's clearly against their interest?' Consider the response you get. Is it a plain or cleverly-constructed dismissal out of hand? Even if laced with pity? But what you should watch out for is verbal hostility. If you hear hostile words, even if expressed engagingly, avoid that person....

Almost 200,000 Chinese students joined North American universities in the last academic year, an increase of 23% from the previous year according to the Institute of International Education, a US nonprofit.The Chinese call them "sea turtles," the lucky few who go abroad—the US often being their first choice—for education, and then return home with better English and a broader cultural perspective to get good jobs with Western companies. (The nickname applies because sea turtles return home to lay eggs for the next generation.)China's education system emphasizes rote learning at the expense of creativity. While Americans are more often taught...

The University of Phoenix, the nation’s largest for-profit university, is closing 115 of its brick-and-mortar locations, including 25 main campuses and 90 smaller satellite learning centers. The closings will affect some 13,000 students, about 4 percent of its student body of 328,000. [Snip] Enrollments at the University of Phoenix and in the for-profit sector over all have been declining in the last two years, partly because of growing competition from other online providers, including nonprofit and public universities, and a steady drumroll of negative publicity about the sector’s recruiting abuses, low graduation rates and high default rates. Late last month,...

Why do students go to college? A new poll has a one-word answer: money. That's one of the findings in a broad Gallup survey of college admissions officers done for Inside Higher Ed. The admissions officers seem to believe that those planning to attend college view it largely as a signaling device that directs the best and brightest young Americans to the best and highest-paying jobs. It is not primarily about acquiring knowledge ("human capital"), critical learning or leadership skills, or better perceiving the difference between right and wrong, but more about achieving the American Dream of a comfortable, moderately affluent...

The University of California -- Merced (UCM) spent $80,000 in a self-described attempt to advance ideas of “economic justice.” According to the school’s official website, UCM aims to create a “society in which the distribution of resources is equitable” and promote “cultural awareness.” To bring these goals to term, the university created a special “Social Justice” department which hosts annual events such as the “National Coming Out Awareness” week and a “Multicultural Odyssey in San Francisco.”

The University of Texas already has been told twice, but apparently needs to be told a third time: Discriminating against would-be students on racial grounds is contrary to the American way. In the 1950 case Sweatt v. Painter, the state of Texas attempted to preserve the university’s no-blacks policy at its law school by setting up an all-black alternative in Houston in accordance with the “separate but equal” rationale established by Plessy v. Ferguson. The Supreme Court said no, laying the groundwork for the subsequent hammer-and-tongs assault on racial discrimination in education. Nearly half a century later, in 1996, the...

Again the University of Notre Dame is under pressure to officially recognize a ‘Gay-Straight Alliance’ (GSA) club on campus.  Pro-homosexual activists are using the incremental, step-by-step approach to wear down Catholic resistance and boil the proverbial frog slowly. According to The Observer, the Office of Student Affairs is “currently reviewing a proposal to create an official gay-straight alliance (GSA) at Notre Dame.”  Although similar applications have been denied in the past, the student-run newspaper prints an ambiguous response from university president Fr. John Jenkins on the issue.  In a recent interview, he says:  “I think it’s time for a fresh...

Slide show at link. Among the heart breaking details included in the slide show is the % of students receiving Pell Grants at these colleges.