Free Republic

Most Americans firmly believe that educational institutions should be places where all ideas can be discussed and no one need fear reprisal for saying the wrong thing or pursuing the wrong research topic. That ideal, however, is not embraced by all people. There are powerful forces, here and abroad, that want to dominate education in order to advance their goals. They have no qualms about telling students what they must believe or telling faculty members not to research certain topics. Of course, the leaders of our colleges and universities would never cooperate with those authoritarian forces—or would they? In her...

The Department of Education (ED) announced on Tuesday that it is ending the taxpayer funding of political activism jobs on college campuses. The department is rescinding the Biden-era guidance that allowed the Federal Work Study (FWS) program, which provides college students with part-time jobs to help fund their education, to be used for jobs at political rallies, voter hotlines, poll workers and other political activism jobs. Institutions should instead “focus FWS funds on jobs that provide real-world work experience instead of political activities.” “Federal Work Study is meant to provide students opportunities to gain real-world experience that prepares them to...

We all know that our universities are the very last place to go if you want a free and open discussion of ideas. Only approved progressive ideas are permitted, and don’t you forget it. Nothing new really. I’m reading 1491: New Revelations of the Americas before Columbus at the gym, and author Charles C. Mann is describing wars to the death fought by academics over the decades about various migration theories in the Americas and the all-important question of when modern humans first arrived here. There’s the Clovis theory: The "Clovis First" theory posited that the Clovis people, identified by...

I was heartened to see my former employer, Duke University Health System, quietly reverse its commitment to woke racism this year. I had joined the internal resistance to its diversity, equity, and inclusion crusade and was fired because of it. Here’s my story. Without public notice, the 38,000-employee organization scrubbed its website of the commitment to DEI it had trumpeted in 2021, when it proclaimed racism a “public health crisis,” and “equity” as its cure. Now, all such fealty to DEI has been discarded with its new 2025 statement of values. The title of its 2021 pledge to patients –...

In a memo to the college community on Tuesday, President Audrey Bilger said she first learned of the incident through media reports and confirmed that an independent third-party investigator will conduct the review. According to a report by OregonLive, a federal affidavit revealed that investigators identified alumnus Robert Jacob Hoopes as a suspect accused of throwing a rock that struck a federal officer in the face. The incident occurred during a June 14 protest outside the Immigration and Customs Enforcement building in South Portland. According to the affidavit, FBI investigators used facial recognition software along with images from OregonLive and...

The phrase “go woke, go broke” is often used by critics of corporate social responsibility. It implies that companies face a binary choice: embrace progressive values or pursue profit. But this dichotomy between “wokeness” and capitalism is both simplistic and increasingly out of step with corporate reality. Many companies are learning to navigate a middle path. They are embedding social, environmental and ethical considerations into their business strategies – not in spite of profit, but because it contributes to long-term value creation. Understanding this shift – and the backlash to it – is fundamental to grasping modern corporate responsibility. Our...

Stanford University is laying off more than 300 workers, according to a California Employment Development Department filing documents. In a Thursday update on the university’s financial issues, Stanford said the layoffs were in response to new Trump administration rules affecting Stanford's budget. Stanford University cited “ongoing economic uncertainty,” looming federal cuts and rising operational costs as the reasons for the staffing cuts. The university’s endowment tax was bumped up from 1.4% to 8% after President Donald Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” was signed into law. In an email to the Stanford Daily, Luisa Rapport, a university spokesperson, said an increase...

When Professor Catherine D’Ignazio isn’t running the “Data + Feminism” lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology or organizing “reproductive justice hackathons” she is fighting Donald Trump’s “state terrorism.” The urban studies professor, and “data feminism” scholar, recently explained “how U.S. universities can survive state terrorism” in an essay for Academe Blog. “What distinguishes state terrorism from other routine uses of force is that the violence is designed to ‘send a message’ —to reverberate out into the population, to engender fear, and to shift behavior,” Professor D’Ignazio (pictured) explains. “The US government’s detentions of students such as [Tufts University doctoral...

The Department of Justice said Tuesday that UCLA violated the civil rights of Jewish and Israeli students who reported harassment and intimidation during a spring 2024 pro-Palestinian campus encampment... In a letter addressed to UC President Michael V. Drake, DOJ officials said “Jewish and Israeli students at UCLA were subjected to severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive harassment that created a hostile environment by members of the encampment.” The letter faulted UCLA for not taking down the encampment until after it was attacked by pro-Israel group. In addition, the department found UCLA was “inadequate” in its response to complaints from Jewish...

Dating is hard, but blaming all men for your horrible choices is easy. A new New York Times piece, “The Trouble With Wanting Men,” by Jean Garnett, posits that the trouble with wanting men is … men. Like, all of them. It’s part of a genre of man-hating thought pieces that turn hetero love and dating into an all-out gender war — and totally absolve women of any agency or responsibility in their relationships. There’s no accountability or introspection, just the big diagnosis that men are the problem, from a woman who has decided to pursue open relationships, casual sex...

Department of Education Secretary Linda McMahon announced an investigation into several universities that have been accused of giving scholarships to non-citizens.In a statement posted on X on Wednesday, President Donald Trump’s Education Secretary wrote that “Non-citizens should not be given special preference over American citizens for scholarships at American universities."“@usedgov opened an investigation into five universities for allegedly blocking U.S. students from accessing DACA scholarships,” she added.Non-citizens should not be given special preference over American citizens for scholarships at American universities.@usedgov opened an investigation into 5 universities for allegedly blocking U.S. students from accessing DACA scholarships.https://t.co/eDU1VrdIVH— Secretary Linda McMahon (@EDSecMcMahon)...

Elite universities know they’re in the wrong. For years, they’ve been: Charging upwards of 60% for “overhead” costs for federal research grants. Blatantly violating the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2023 Civil Rights ruling barring race-based admissions and hiring practices. Allowing rampant antisemitism on campus. Reliant on international students from illiberal regimes. Facing both mounting pressure from the Trump administration to change their ways, and vocal opposition from their Marxist students and faculty to remain the same, university presidents are starting to fold:

Science is broken--just like every discipline in which 'expertise' is the product being sold for money and prestige. We've seen the practical effects for quite a while. 'Experts' have been getting everything wrong for a long time, and in increasingly dangerous ways. A few years ago, a scandal broke out regarding psychological and sociological research--almost no experimental results were duplicable, suggesting that the 'conclusions' were as valuable as a $3 bill. Nutrition research is total bunkum. Anybody who followed the government's nutrition advice got fat, and the American diet is now filled with poison. Climate 'science?' It's nearly impossible to...

OPINION: The First Amendment exists to protect dissent and divergent opinions, not just ideas that align with rigid campus orthodoxy The University of Oregon just learned a very costly lesson about free speech. This cautionary tale began in June 2022, when Portland State University Professor Bruce Gilley responded to a University of Oregon Division of Equity and Inclusion “racism interrupter” post on Twitter by retweeting it with the comment “all men are created equal.” Ironically, it seems that UO’s definition of “inclusion” didn’t include tolerance for the principle of colorblindness. Rather than recognizing that Gilley’s quote from the Declaration of...

Protesters confront federal agents in Camarillo, California farm raid A California professor was arrested for allegedly chucking a tear gas canister at ICE agents during a raid on a marijuana farm being investigated for child labor violations. Jonathan Anthony Caravello — a math and philosophy professor at California State University Channel Islands — was arrested by federal agents conducting a raid at Glass House Farms in Ventura County on Thursday, ABC 7 reported. US Attorney Bill Essayli posted on X that Caravello was arrested for “throwing a tear gas canister at law enforcement.” Essayli said Caravello was charged with “a...

A mysterious fever gripped the nation in 2020. Some called it mass formation psychosis. Others called it hysteria. It was a result of three distinct events, as well as institutional responses designed to exploit existing societal tensions. Those three events were the Covid-19 pandemic, the death of George Floyd, and the impending re-election of Donald Trump. So much of what we were told by the authorities and the experts at that time has now been debunked. But those who work in academia know that, as crazy as life was out in the “real world,” it was even crazier in the...

A professor at the University of Chicago recently cursed against the school and said she only worked there to “build power” for Palestinian solidarity. The professor, Eman Abdelhadi, made the statements on July 5 during a socialism conference held in Chicago, according to The Daily Caller. In her remarks, Abdelhadi reportedly said that UChicago is “evil” and a “colonial landlord,” and that she asked herself why she worked there. “F**k the University of Chicago—it’s evil,” the professor said. “You know, it’s a colonial landlord. Why would I put any of my political energy into this space?”

University of Houston professor David McNally proposed renaming his school to "George Floyd University" and abolishing tuition and grades at the Socialism 2025 conference Saturday. While wearing a keffiyeh, McNally spoke on a panel in Chicago about what fighting the state would look like in the "context of growing an insurgent mass movement."

Before I wrote about Second Amendment stuff most of the time, I wrote a lot about education. From Title IX abuse to woke administrators and teachers, I covered a lot. AdvertisementThen I came here and started writing about this, which is at least as important as reforming our educational system.Yet I always knew there would be some opportunities to return to talking about colleges. After all, they're notoriously anti-gun, too, as we see from a situation in Maine.A Christian student in a class apparently talked previously about finding Jesus. So far, so good, apparently.Yet the student wanted to talk about...

In recent decades, academia has created or implemented a truly jaw-dropping array of programs and ideas. And not in a good way. Whether “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” (DEI) policies or Annual Sex Week, these new notions all seem aimed at chipping away at the foundations of a society based on common-sense, truth, fairness, and morality. One such idea is the “land acknowledgment.” It is a statement that a particular event or organization is located on land that once belonged to specific indigenous tribes. Land acknowledgments first appeared in Australia in the late 1970s. They were adopted in Canada before coming...