Free Republic

Oliver Friedfeld and his roommate were mugged last weekend. They were forced to the ground and their valuables were taken from them. In response, Friedfeld has blamed himself because he is a member of the middle class. Writing in Georgetown University's “The Hoya,” Friedfeld penned an article detailing the robbery called “I was Mugged, And I Understand Why.” In it, he attributed his mugging to being a member of the middle class, instead of to the people who mugged him. ...And the fact that he comes “from a solidly middle-class family” means that Friedfeld should be a target of muggings,...

Florida Atlantic University has found yet another new and exciting way to demonstrate that it is the worst place in America to attend college.Officials at the taxpayer-funded school are now requiring students to declare how much sex they’ve had (including oral sex) and how many sexual partners they’ve had in the last few months, Campus Reform reports.Students have reportedly been blocked from registering for courses unless they answered the invasive questions posed by the public school officials.“How many times have you had sex (including oral) in the last three months,” the survey demands to know, according to local NBC affiliate...

It would be unreasonable to expect a student with the reading, writing and computing abilities of an eighth-grader to do well in college. If such a student were admitted, his retention would require that the college create dumbed-downed or phantom courses. The University of North Carolina made this accommodation; many athletes were enrolled in phantom courses in the department of African and African-American studies. The discovery and resulting scandal are simply the tip of the iceberg and a symptom of a much larger problem. A UNC learning specialist hired to help athletes found that during the years 2004 to 2012,...

A meningitis outbreak at the University of Maryland may be related to another virus that has swept across the country during recent months, though further testing is being conducted to determine the possibility. If the tests are positive, it would mean that yet another manifestation of enterovirus-68 has occurred. In Maryland, the state public health lab is conducting a broad range of testing on specimens submitted to the agency, state epidemiologist Dr. David Blythe says. Agency officials would not specify whether testing for EV-68 was occurring and did not confirm whether samples had been sent to the Centers for Disease...

A father of eight has sparked controversy by refusing to save money for his children’s college education. Guerilla Parenting author David T. Fagan told the Washington Post that college is 'a lot of wasted time' and if his children want to attend, they will have to pay for it themselves. The 37-year-old marketing entrepreneur, whose family lives in Orange County, California, added to MailOnline: 'The focus is too much on a piece of paper and not enough on self-reliance.'

A controversial Islamist group will gather at Tufts University on Friday for a weekend-long conference that will include training students to take “direct action” against pro-Israel and Jewish students on U.S. campuses, according to a schedule of the conference obtained by the Free Beacon. The event, held by Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), which is run by the American Muslims for Palestine, has raised concerns among students who feel threatened by the group’s highly aggressive—and sometimes violent—tactics. SJP is known for leading some the most hostile anti-Israel campaigns on campus, including comparisons of the Jewish state to Nazi Germany,...

Even in privileged circumstances — say, while studying at Dartmouth College — life as an undocumented immigrant can be frightening and uncertain . For Oscar Cornejo, a sophomore from Illinois, it began at age 5, when his mother arranged to bring his brother and him across the border from their home in Cuernavaca, Mexico. When asked what earned him his admission, he hesitated, not wanting to boast. He credited affirmative action and his early decision application, and ultimately, his personal statement, “which blended my migration story in a nostalgic tone to describe my love for botany (at that time!) in...

"Self-described 'dissident feminist' Camille Paglia has written an op-ed piece for Time Magazine arguing that female college students are naive and careless about the true nature of men as sexual predators. Paglia, 67, a professor at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, penned the column this week in reaction to the recent abduction of University of Virginia sophomore Hannah Graham, 18, who was last seen two weeks ago in the company of a 32-year-old nursing assistant. Jesse Matthew was captured in Texas last week and charged with abduction with intent to defile, but so far there is no sign...

A Haaretz reporter was ejected from a pro-Palestinian conference at Birzeit University on Saturday, reporter Amira Hass said—simply for being an Israeli Jew. Hass attempted to attend the “Alternatives to Neo-Liberal Development in the Occupied Palestinian Territories—Critical Perspectives” conference at the university, which is located near Ramallah where she lives. But she was ejected from the hall by the organizers, Hass claimed, after students at the admission desk noted she worked for the Israeli publication and alerted security authorities to intervene. Birzeit University has had a policy of barring Israeli Jews from the campus for over 20 years, administrators said,...

The faculty at George Washington University made substantial contributions to President Obama when he was seeking that office. They are about to contribute heavily towards their own medical care now that his Obamacare is the law of the land. gwu bust George Washington University’s student newspaper, The GW Hatchet, reports that the university has “traded in a more expensive employee health care plan to avoid paying nearly $1 million in additional taxes.” The article noted that GWU will offer “a cheaper plan to ease faculty concerns about rising costs.” The new plan offered by the university is a high-deductible plan,...

Apparently the only jobs college accreditation reviewers are interested in are their own, not those of recent college graduates. “Accreditation has become a roadblock to reform,” Hank Brown, the former president of the University of Colorado, said at the Heritage Foundation yesterday, “a system that leads to majors that go nowhere.” I asked him whether college accreditation boards even considered the post-graduation employment of graduates as an afterthought in their reviews. “I’ve seen very few accreditation ratings that focus on that,” he said. “I think that would be of great value.” Brown is also the former president of the University...

It is a long-standing and often repeated lament on the right that academia and college campuses are self-declared enemies of conservative thinking broadly, and the Republican party specifically, and in a treacherous but overt and unrepentant manner. So it comes as no surprise to website The College Fix that some colleges are offering course credit for promoting socialist causes and participating in socialist recruitment on campus. Not a surprise, but still an outrage. Young Democratic Socialists (YDS) are coordinating with administrators to help YDS Leader program participants get college credit for their activities. According to The Fix, activities which...

The six-pointed star that separates good bigotry from bad By Dennis Powell Bigotry is a bad, very bad, unforgivable thing. Except, of course, when it isn't. It is, for instance, perfectly acceptable to criticize someone for acting like a white man. Not so much to criticize someone for acting like a black man. (Both examples are ridiculous, there being no homogeneity within either group.) Criticizing a man for behaving "like a man" is allowed; criticizing a woman for behaving "like a woman" is not. The moral justification for the distinction is unclear and, I suspect, nonexistent. What brings this to...

Students can wave goodbye to being driven to university by embarrassing parents in an overloaded car – and pay to arrive in style instead. Launching on Monday, The Very Important Fresher package offers those with the budget the option to travel to campus by helicopter, private jet, Ferrari or Aston Martin. Other luxury options include a Rolls Royce Phantom, Mclaren P1 – and even a horse and carriage - which will set buyers back up to £25,000.

This summer’s 50-day conflict between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, which has come to a close if a cease-fire reached last week holds, has spurred a sharp rise in both anti-Israel and anti-Semitic incidents around the world. At the same time, the boundary between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism has become increasingly blurred, particularly on American college campuses. flag of israel Trouble for Jewish students got underway even before the start of classes. At an orientation event in late August, a pro-Israel student at Temple University in Philadelphia was punched in the face by a member of Students for Justice in Palestine...

It has laid largely unstudied in a university library for more than 100 years. But now a 1,500-year-old papyrus has been identified as one of the world’s earliest surviving Christian charms. The ‘remarkable’ document contains some of the earliest documented references to The Last Supper and sheds new light on early Christian practices, experts say.

This year the movie God Is Not Dead preyed on every Christian parent’s fear of sending a child off to college only to have their family’s faith and values undermined by an atheist college professor espousing some form of moral relativism. The movie hinges on a certain cliché, but the cliché is a cliché because many of us took a class with “that professor.” He might not have been so over-the-top, but his prejudices were evident. The American university tends to be fairly hostile to the conservative movement. One of the core tenets of conservatism is the Judeo-Christian teaching that...

A professor actually lost out on an academic job due to his anti-Israeli musings. Beware, the following tweet is NSFW (or “not safe for work”) due to profanity. steve salaita twitter “This month, my campus, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, was widely expected to welcome Steven Salaita as a new faculty member,” Cary Nelson wrote in an essay which appeared on Inside Higher Ed.com on August 8, 2014. “He was to be a tenured professor in the American Indian studies program. But a decision not to present the appointment to the Board of Trustees was made by the chancellor....

<p>BUFFALO, N.Y. (AP) — Syracuse University has claimed the title of nation’s top party school.</p> <p>The No. 1 ranking was revealed Monday by The Princeton Review based on a nationwide survey of 130,000 students.</p> <p>Syracuse’s student newspaper ranked second best among the 379 colleges surveyed, and its sports scene, rated third best, likely helped the party mood.</p>

The big business of education is forever altering the state university systems around the country. They have become vessels of profit and enrichment for some, and are steadily distancing themselves from the citizenry of the home state. Hiding behind diversity and internationalism, universities have moved to out of state students and ultimately the international student. Left out are the in-state students looking for a reasonable cost of a college education from their own state university. Why does college cost so much? Why does a professor who gave a lecture to a 200 seat hall ten years ago cost so much...