Free Republic

The administration has moved to cut $400 million in federal funding to the university without changes to its policies and rules.Columbia University agreed on Friday to overhaul its protest policies, security practices and Middle Eastern studies department in a remarkable concession to the Trump administration, which has refused to consider restoring $400 million in federal funds without major changes. The agreement, which stunned and dismayed many members of the faculty, could signal a new stage in the administration’s escalating clash with elite colleges and universities. Harvard, Stanford, the University of Michigan and dozens of other schools face federal inquiries and...

A demand for the university’s administration to place the Middle Eastern studies department under receivership could signal a broader crackdown across the United States. It was an obscure, 44-word demand toward the end of the Trump administration’s ultimatum to Columbia University this month ordering a dramatic overhaul of admissions and disciplinary rules. But it could prove to have consequences for colleges and universities nationwide.With $400 million in canceled government grants and contracts on the line, federal officials ordered Columbia’s administration to place the university’s Middle Eastern studies department under academic receivership for at least five years.Typically, a receivership is handled...

Columbia University has been ground zero for the Ivy League’s pro-Hamas demonstrators. Since the October 7, 2023, terror attack, activists at the university have set up encampments, occupied buildings, shut down classes, and targeted Jewish students. The Trump administration recently moved to revoke a protest leader’s green card and canceled $400 million in federal funding because of the university’s failure to address anti-Semitism on campus. This student-led movement is also supported by some faculty. We have identified one Columbia professor, neuropsychologist Jennifer J. Manly... snip According to the National Institutes of Health and other publicly accessible databases, she has been...

Over the last three decades, elite American universities have engaged in economic, political, social, and cultural practices that were often unethical, illegal -- and suicidal. They did so with impunity. Apparently, confident administrators assumed that the brand of Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, and other elite universities was so precious to the nation's elite movers and shakers that they could always do almost anything they wished. By the 1970s, non-profit universities had dropped pretenses that they were apolitical and non-partisan. Instead, they customarily violated the corpus of iconic civil rights legislation by weighing race, gender, and sexual orientation in biased admissions,...

Another radical leftist has been caught calling for violence against President Trump. As TGP readers know, leftists across America have issued countless calls for violence against members of the Trump Administration for weeks, including the president himself. This situation has gotten so dire that agitators are now accosting the children of these officials. On Saturday, UCLA Criminal Law Professor Peter Arenella posted a tweet saying that the U.S. Military must launch an insurrection against Trump in order to stop America from becoming an ally of Russia. Yes, he actually said the U.S. military must destroy democracy to prevent America from...

Courts have repeatedly ruled that colleges and universities violate the First Amendment rights of professors when they retaliate against them for having said things administrators dislike. Nevertheless, such cases continue to arise. Victories for freedom of speech have not stopped the abuse of power by intolerant officials. The reason why is that those officials don’t have to fear personal liability for their actions. The school might lose, but the officials won’t have to pay for the costs they caused. The money to pay damages comes from the school, not from them. And why is that? The answer is “qualified immunity.”...

I want to read you an email that I was asked to keep confidential because I think it explains some of my worries about academia. The Nature Physics comment is here: https://www.youtube.com/redirect?event=video_description&redir_token=QUFFLUhqbDJsQ0w2TWlKT2lraDVvOWlkaUNJcXk4SUU4Z3xBQ3Jtc0tuRF8xYXN5cjhXMktuWHcwdGZneXJyR3VKYU9PeG9WNnFGWDJCWEFGS2ZTWEtKTk5FdlY4QzN1WWU5dVJ5NGNPOU1fSHdIT1ZjR01sV3FnYW5qZEpQVzBIZkFvNUNwUWNsXzRBMzhvMGVYSWRWc1FsYw&q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nature.com%2Farticles%2Fnphys4079&v=shFUDPqVmTg I knew that physicists would go on to argue I should have tried to solve the problem internally (within the community) before drawing public attention to it. The reason I published this comment was so that I could later demonstrate that I did this. This is why it's a paywalled publication that you don't find on the arxiv. But just by accident and totally unrelated here is another...

The science community is clapping back at President Donald Trump’s efforts to cut facilities and administrative costs that go out to institutions when the federal government disperses money for publicly funded research projects. A cohort of academic unions around the country has called on scientists, researchers, clinicians, academics and “allies” to protest in front of the Health and Human Services Department building and at different universities across the country on Wednesday, calling it a “National Day of Action.” The Feb. 19 event follows protests outside the HHS building Friday, during which demonstrators locked arms in front of the building and...

Universities occupy a uniquely privileged position in American life. They enjoy tremendous prestige and billions in public subsidies, even as their costs have exploded, saddling the country with $1.7 trillion in outstanding student debt. Do universities deserve their status? A growing number of Americans don’t think so. Far from delivering on their promises, most universities have devolved into left-wing propaganda factories. Nearly 60 percent of Republicans say that universities have a negative effect on the country, and only one in three independents has “quite a lot” of trust in higher education institutions. The trendlines suggest that the disillusionment has yet...

It’s only two weeks into the new Trump administration, and we’re seeing an incredible sea change start in the federal government. In his first campaign, Trump promised to “drain the swamp,” and then when he took office he barely got started on the project during a full four year term. Maybe he was too distracted by constant investigations, lawfare, “Russia! Russia! Russia!” and the like. But this time it’s much different. The big news of the past day or two is the beginning of purges at DOJ, the FBI, and USAID. Those thoroughly corrupt institutions are very good places to...

Higher education seemingly played an important if largely negative role in the recent presidential election. Exit polls showed that non-college-educated voters overwhelmingly favored Donald Trump. Many voters associated Kamala Harris unfavorably with progressive trends and ideas prevalent on elite campuses, such as pro-Hamas protests and gender ideology. The election’s outcome has sparked introspection in some typically left-leaning publications, such as the Chronicle of Higher Education, where William Deresiewicz opined bluntly, “The politics of the academy have been defeated. Its ideas … have been rejected.” But what any of this means for likely post-election policy is unclear. Trump’s lengthiest statement on...

Executive decree says US government must be 'vigilant' in issuing visas and ensure recipients support 'do not advocate for, aid, or support designated foreign terrorists.' By Jacob Magid and ToI Staff. 21 January 2025. Trump order appears to target some foreigners participating in anti-Israel protests. An anti-Israel protester appears to be wearing a Hamas headband and carrying an approximation of the terror group's flag at a rally in New York City on May 18, 2024. (John Lamparski / AFP) An executive order signed by US President Donald Trump on Monday appeared to target, among others, foreign nationals who participated in...

Planned Parenthood failed to pass its abortion agenda. Now, the so-called “health” organization is entering Pennsylvania’s school board elections — and their fight has to do with everything besides bettering students’ lives. While parents worry about test scores, school safety, quality-of-life issues and helping teachers perform their jobs, Planned Parenthood wants to fill students’ minds with their radical agenda. Our students may struggle to read, but that is okay with Planned Parenthood, so long as their school board candidates push more robust sex-ed, gender ideology and pro-abortion talking points to our vulnerable children. I know this fight well. As the...

The newly inaugurated second Trump administration has arrived, and among the changes that the president and his allies have proposed is large-scale simplification and elimination of government regulations. President Trump stated in a press conference in December that he wants 10 old regulations eliminated for every new regulation added. The arguments for deregulation are not new. Regulations function as an indirect tax that slows economic growth: Compliance costs money, and the expense is often passed on to the consumer. Regulations also cost the government (and, therefore, the taxpayer) money to promulgate, revise, and enforce. Deregulation, thus, is a win for...

Educational institutions and college-affiliated groups are preparing for President-elect Trump's inauguration by offering mental health advice, delivering travel notices to international students, and organizing anti-Israel rallies. Most schools will be closed on Inauguration Day, Jan. 20, due to it falling on a federal holiday, Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Similar to Trump's first inauguration and the weeks following his victory in the 2024 election, universities and education groups are offering different outlets for students on Monday. Several anti-Israel college groups in Chicago are planning demonstrations. The University of Illinois Chicago's Students for Justice in Palestine (SJPUIC) and Students for a...

Exposing the “Hamas Loyalists” who are teaching terror on our campuses.. A paid social media ad campaign launched this week by the David Horowitz Freedom Center is targeting pro-terror “Hamas Loyalist” professors at ten prestigious American universities who choose to promote the ideology of the genocidal terrorist cult, often in direct violation of university policy. The professors targeted in the campaign not only defend Hamas’s brutality—the slaughter of over a thousand Jews, the rape and mutilation of women, the beheading of children—but outright celebrate it as a form of liberation that should be emulated across the globe. Consider San Francisco...

A university in Canada is employing a terrorist who played a role in murdering French Jews in a synagogue on a Jewish holiday. Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada, is employing Professor Hassan Diab, a terrorist who was part of a 1980 terror attack that bombed a synagogue in Paris, murdering four Jews and wounding almost 50 people, wrote The Jerusalem Post. The massacre occurred on the Jewish holiday of Simchat Torah, noted the National Post. Diab was convicted in France for his role in the murders, but managed to flee to Canada, though he still faces a life sentence in...

Barely a day passes without colleges scolded in the headlines over admissions or athletics and endowments or education and expression. Schools have become scapegoats for both good and bad reasons. Prominent commentators and populist political leaders from both the far left and far right now target higher education as a common enemy. In fact the current fight over the meritocracy vs charges of elitism which would not characterize other fields such as sports or entertainment have torn open a seam on the right between Vivek Ramaswamy and Elon Musk in favor of selectivity and merit on one side and Laura...

Princeton University professor Eddie Glaude, Jr. claimed on Monday on MSNBC’s “Deadline” that greed, selfishness, and hatred motivate the voters for President-elect Donald Trump. Glaude said, “Its an important point that requires I think a bit truth-telling about the Republican Party in its modern iteration. There’s always been at least these three elements corporatists, libertarian and nativist. Right. So this is a really important point, right? In the sense that you’ve always had these three components and Ronald Reagan was able to balance them in interesting sorts of ways.” He continued, “And so we have here is the plutocrat, right,...

The Biden-Harris administration has let five University of California campuses off the hook in a settlement with the Department of Education over antisemitism that erupted after the Hamas terror attack in Israel on October 7, 2023. The San Francisco Chronicle reported Monday on the settlement, which does little beyond requiring self-reporting: The Department of Education found that UCLA, UC Santa Barbara, UC San Diego, UC Davis and UC Santa Cruz “appear not to have responded promptly or effectively to notice of alleged national origin discrimination, including harassment” against its students and employees. … As part of the settlement, the universities...