Free Republic

The defense of free speech has always been a bedrock bipartisan principle. So it’s unusual to hear a veteran liberal politician excuse campus outrage squads that shout down dissent. But that’s exactly what former Vermont governor and Democratic National Committee head Howard Dean did in a recent appearance.. Dean’s take on this was that there are “consequences to free speech.” He caricatured Erika Christakis’s thoughtful, sensitive letter as an ugly screed mocking “snowflake” students and defending racist costumes. He also described the protesters as well-behaved, despite their screaming and bullying. ... Dean is hardly alone...progressives on and off campus are...

In last month's column "Academic Cesspools," I wrote about "Indoctrinate U," a recently released documentary exposing egregious university indoctrination of young people at prestigious and not-so-prestigious universities (www.onthefencefilms.com/movies.html). I said the documentary only captured the tip of a disgusting iceberg. The Philadelphia-based Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), a frontline organization in the battle against academic suppression of free speech and thought, released information about what's going on at the University of Delaware, and probably at other universities as well, that should send chills up the spines of parents of college-age students. The following excerpts are taken from the...

Global warming lecture at CSUF stirs controversy Science weighs against philosophy on campus By: Sylvia Masuda Issue date: 10/18/07 Section: News Posted: 10/18/07 Controversy erupted in the Cal State Fullerton science community over Tuesday's global warming lecture in the Titan Theater. Research professor and climatologist Patrick Michaels presented "Reducing the Effects of Global Warming in Southern California," a presentation which explained why global warming is not an imminent problem. The Economics Association organized the event. Over the years, science organizations have criticized Michaels for exaggerating his credentials and for pushing what they feel is a political agenda. CSUF science...

University Expected to Fire Controversial Professor Today By Susan Jones CNSNews.com Senior Editor July 24, 2007 (CNSNews.com) - Ward Churchill's own lawyer expects the tenured University of Colorado professor to be fired on Tuesday. "Ward Churchill will be fired, and Wednesday, I'll be filing a lawsuit" over free-speech rights," the Denver Post quoted attorney David Lane as saying. The university's governing board plans to hold a closed session on the Boulder campus today, and a decision on Churchill is expected in the middle of the afternoon. According to the Denver Post, Churchill's supporters are planning to show their support at...

The “Weekly Standard” profiled libertarian-leaning conservative and political commentator turned documentarian Evan Coyne Maloney, whose new documentary about the leftist ideological indoctrination and pervasive political correctness in the US higher education system is called “Indoctrinate U”. Saturday May 19, CSPAN ran a segment about his film on the network’s “Washington Journal”, but CSPAN posts footage of the shows online (when they have it up, I'll post it. His spot is at the two-hour mark). You can see a clip of his film on YouTube as well as the film's website, Indoctrinate-U.com. “Indoctrinate U” focuses on the pervasive trampling of free...

The agents of political correctness who police the nation's college and university campuses generally use shame and scorn to beat down free expression deemed offensive by the tiniest minority. But sometimes, institutions aren't content to merely marginalize those who fail to embrace a worldview that emphasizes the rights of groups over those of individuals. Rather than engage these free spirits in open debate in a classroom setting -- isn't that what college is all about? -- administrators seek to re-educate these malefactors on the proper way to think. Michigan State University has taken the multicultural mantra of indoctrination to a...

University of Michigan President Mary Sue Coleman is offering students an interesting lesson: Never let the law prevail over your own vanity. Just one day after Michigan voters overwhelmingly passed Proposal 2 - thereby ending racial and gender preferences in the state's public sector, Coleman said she'd do everything possible to avoid incorporating racial equality into her school's admissions policies.

As Goes Harvard. . . Donald Kagan Harvard University has been much in the public eye in recent years, especially during the brief but eventful presidency (2001-2006) of Lawrence Summers. Two well-known law professors were accused of misusing the words of others in books they had written, and a famous professor of economics was charged by the U.S. government with fraud while working on a Harvard project. In the first case, a university committee decided that the acts fell short of plagiarism but amounted to a scholarly transgression, and the professors were compelled to apologize. In the second, the university...

Missouri State teacher had required petitions supporting 'gay' adoptions. Missouri State University professor has been placed on leave as part of the settlement of a lawsuit brought by a student who reported that Frank G. Kauffman had tried to force her to sign a petition supporting "gay" adoptions. According to the Alliance Defense Fund, which brought the case on behalf of student Emily Brooker, officials at the school reacted quickly to the lawsuit, agreeing to a settlement that repaired damage inflicted when she was punished for expressing her Christian views on the subject. "Being a Christian shouldn't make you a...

As many writers on FSM have made clear, students heading back to colleges in the next couple weeks will likely find extreme ideological imbalance, intense loathing for the military, insane beliefs that would never hold up outside the academy, and attacks on free speech. But if none of that lights your fire, let’s look at two far less esoteric issues: crime and money. Both supply even more proof as to how out-of-step with the real world the academy is.

PHILADELPHIA - Temple University, accused of discriminating against those with conservative viewpoints, has approved a new grievance procedure and will publicize it to students this fall. Temple's Board of Trustees voted last week to enact a uniform policy at its various schools for students with complaints about academic freedom, spokesman Raymond Betzner said. The state Legislature held a two-day public hearing on the subject at Temple last year, but school officials do not believe there is a widespread problem. During the hearing, now-retired Temple President David Adamany said he had not received a single complaint on the subject in his...

Ga. Tech defends gay-inclusive policies Lawsuit among rising tide of challenges to so-called ‘speech codes’ By DYANA BAGBY Friday, May 12, 2006 Responding this week to a federal lawsuit filed by two students against the Georgia Institute of Technology, state attorneys said the public university’s policies do not limit the free speech rights of those who oppose gay rights. Tech does not "prohibit or restrict expressive speech or activity by students or their organizations. Students, faculty and friends of Tech have the right to make statements as they please in the public areas without fear of reprisals," Assistant Attorney General...

Thursday, March 30, 2006 Study Casts Doubt on Claims That Conservative Students Face Discrimination in Classes By JENNIFER JACOBSON A study showing that conservative and liberal students do equally well in courses with politically charged content casts doubt on conservative activists' claims that liberal faculty members routinely discriminate against their conservative students. The study found no difference in the grades conservative and liberal students receive in sociology, cultural anthropology, and women's-studies courses. It also found that conservative students tend to earn higher grades than their liberal classmates in business and economics courses. Titled "What's in a Grade? Academic Success and...

[John K. Wilson, who posed these questions, is the editor and publisher of Illinois Academe, the newsletter of the Illinois Association of University Professors. Wilson is the author of The Myth of Political Correctness: The Conservative Attack on Higher Education, 1995] Wilson: You are “grateful” to your own professors at Columbia University in the 1950s, where even though you were a Marxist, professors “never singled me out for comment” or asked, “why do Communists kill so many people?”(xlvii) I find it strange that someone who now regrets his youthful belief in idiotic ideas would praise his teachers for failing to...

Harvard Lays an Egg The triumph of the diversity faction and the fall of Larry Summers by James Piereson 03/06/2006, Volume 011, Issue 24 When the late Allan Bloom visited the Harvard campus some years ago to deliver a speech on his bestselling book The Closing of the American Mind, he began his remarks with the salutation, "Fellow Elitists," a takeoff on Franklin Roosevelt's address years earlier to the nativist Daughters of the American Revolution which he introduced with the words, "Fellow Immigrants." Bloom was having some fun at the expense of Harvard's students and faculty, all of whom had...

Personality Test: The dispositional dispute in teacher preparation today, and what to do about it by William Damon 09/08/2005 The standards of the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Excellence (NCATE) are of critical import for America's future teaching corps and for K-12 education in general and will wield disproportionate influence for decades to come. Over the past fifteen years, 25 states have outsourced the approval of teacher preparation programs to NCATE by adopting or adapting its standards as their own; the other 25 have various "partnerships" with the organization. Which makes it all the more disturbing that central to...

As soon as Mark (pseudonym) walked into his Women in Literature class, his professor handed him a note stating the following: It has come to my attention that your comments to other students sitting near you in our Women in Literature (sic) have been both critical of the class subject matter, derogatory of the ideas other students are contributing to class discussion, and crudely dismissive of issues I have raised. At first, Mark could not believe he was being described as “crudely dismissive” by his professor. After all, she talked about her private life in class and published a book...

Profs get warned of freedoms By MENSAH M. DEAN deanm@phillynews.com Words such as "McCarthyism" and "chill" buzzed through a group of Temple University professors and students who gathered on campus yesterday to discuss a state legislative committee's investigation of political diversity at state-run colleges. The "teach-in," sponsored by the Temple Association of University Professionals, drew an audience overwhelmingly convinced that the committee's very existence is a threat to academic freedom. "I think that there is a concern that people are going to start coming in and say, 'You can do this, but you can't do this.' If we are teaching...

A Closer Look at the 'Five Stooges' Investigating Ward Churchill by Jim Paine from Dictionary.com: stooge (stj)n. The partner in a comedy team who feeds lines to the other comedian; a straight man. One who allows oneself to be used for another's profit or advantage; a puppet. One would think that with all the public attention on the actions of CU's Standing Committee on Research Misconduct (SCRM) vis á vis its treatment of the Ward Churchill investigation, SCRM would approach the task of selecting the final investigating committee members with care, nay, with great fear and trembling. One would think SCRM...

SANTA BARBARA, Calif. - Leftist leaders at the University of California, Santa Barbara have begun distributing a profanity-sprinkled "Disorientation Guide" that calls for a return to the activist spirit of the 1960s. The guide, which came out last week, features interviews with the college's "most politically active" professors, a directory of local liberal organizations and commentaries on subjects including feminism, corporate media, proper "queer" terminology and the value of blogs.It also chronicles the history of UCSB activism, including the infamous 1970 burning of the Bank of America in Isla Vista."A lot of people have passion for certain issues, but never...