Free Republic

Progressives have long wished that the federal government would more aggressively enforce civil-rights law in higher education. Did they wish upon a monkey’s paw? Since Donald Trump retook the White House, his administration has used the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to trap dozens of colleges in the federal equivalent of a headlock, forcing them to submit to sweeping demands or else have their federal funds frozen or foreign students banned. According to Team Trump, it is targeting academics who violate civil-rights laws—by discriminating against Asian Americans in admissions, allowing biological males to compete with females in athletics, tolerating a...

The departure of James Ryan, who had led the school since 2018, represents a dramatic escalation in the Trump administration’s effort to reshape higher education.The president of the University of Virginia is resigning his position under pressure from the Justice Department, which had pushed for his departure amid scrutiny of the school’s diversity, equity and inclusion practices, a person familiar with the matter said Friday.The departure of James Ryan, who had led the school since 2018, represents a dramatic escalation in the Trump administration’s effort to reshape higher education. Doing it at a public university marks a new frontier in...

Georgetown University professor Jonathan Brown, who serves as the University’s chair of the Department of Arabic and Islamic Studies and the director of the Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding, posted a shocking suggestion to the brutal Iranian regime over the weekend. Following the U.S. strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities on Saturday, Brown shared a post on X saying he hoped that Iran would strike a United States military base as a “symbolic” gesture.

After enjoying many decades of high public support, higher education in the U.S. is in serious decline. Polls show that a sizeable percentage of the populace now doubts that college is worth the cost and that it contributes to the public good. Enrollments keep falling, and the luster that a college degree used to confer on graduates has become tarnished, especially since recent events indicate that, instead of helping them mature, college turns them into ideologically obsessed activists. What has gone wrong? In his latest book, Let Colleges Fail, economics professor Richard Vedder employs his insights to answer that question....

An English instructor at Glendale Community College recently sent an email encouraging the campus community to join in protests against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The call came as riotous demonstrations in downtown Los Angeles have included destruction of property, looting, arson incidents, and the injury of at least five police officers. On Sunday, Julie Gamberg, a faculty member at Glendale Community College, sent an email promoting anti-ICE demonstrations organized by the Democratic Socialists of America’s Los Angeles chapter, according to screenshots of the note circulated on X. “Citizens who know their rights can disrupt and slow ICE incursions,” states...

A renowned Harvard University professor was stripped of her tenure and fired after an investigation found she allegedly manipulated data to support multiple studies she conducted. Francesca Gino, a celebrated behavioral scientist at Harvard Business School whose work has focused on dishonesty, was let go after the school’s top governing board determined she tweaked observations in four studies so that their findings boosted her hypotheses, GHB reported. Harvard administrators notified business faculty that Gino was out of a job in a closed-door meeting this past week, the outlet reported. Harvard did not detail the professor’s firing or tenure being stripped...

Michael Mann, a prominent climate scientist and professor at the University of Pennsylvania, sparked controversy on May 23, 2025, by posting on the Bluesky social media platform: “If Trump doesn’t comply, we’re in second amendment territory.” The statement was made in response to a report on a federal judge’s ruling that blocked President Trump’s executive order to dismantle the Department of Education, appearing to suggest people take up arms to overthrow or assassinate the America First leader. The May 22 injunction froze the administration’s plan to eliminate the department, which included terminating around 1,300 employees. Mann’s post—interpreted by many as...

Michael Mann was named the Ivy League school's inaugural vice provost for climate science last year

At one time, most Americans (and virtually all academics) would have agreed with the famous saying, often attributed to Voltaire, “While I disagree with what you say, I will defend to the death your right to say it.” Over the last several decades, that has dramatically changed. Many academics now seem to embrace the opposite view—something like, “Since I disagree with what you say, I will do everything possible to silence you.” Is that an exaggeration? You won’t think so after reading Nicholas Wolfinger’s new book, Professors Speak Out: The Truth About Campus Investigations. Wolfinger, a sociology professor at the...

A senior at Northeastern University filed a formal complaint and demanded a tuition refund after discovering her professor was secretly using AI tools to generate notes. The professor later admitted to using several AI platforms and acknowledged the need for transparency. The incident highlights growing student concerns over professors using AI, a reversal of earlier concerns from professors worried that students would use the technology to cheat. Some students are not happy about their professor’s use of AI. One college senior was so shocked to learn her teacher was using AI to help him create notes that she lodged a...

On May 9, 2025 Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk visited the University of California Riverside as part of his nationwide American Comeback Tour and was enthusiastically greeted by students, faculty, staff and visitors. His presentation began with a hat toss as dozens of iconic Make America Great Again (MAGA) baseball caps were thrown into the audience.

I'm referring to not just the curriculum or majors offered, but also the administration and staff roster. My guess: 75-80% can be eliminated without material impact to the American economy (in spite of the insistence by liberal arts professors that this won't be the case).

More than 80 Harvard faculty members pledged to donate 10 percent of their salaries for up to a year to support the University in its resistance against the Trump administration’s attempts to exact concessions and freeze billions in federal funding. The group is still collecting pledges, but faculty members’ commitments currently amount to more than $2 million, according to Government professor Ryan D. Enos. The faculty sent a letter outlining their planned donation to University President Alan M. Garber ’76 Wednesday afternoon. “If we as a faculty are asking the University administration to resist the Trump administration’s attacks on academic...

Hours after Harvard University faced the Trump administration in court for the first time in its push to restore more than $2 billion in blocked federal funding, the nation’s oldest and wealthiest college made a symbolic bow to White House demands, renaming its diversity, equity and inclusion office. The change was announced Monday in an email to the campus community from the head of what had been the Office for Equity, Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging. It nods to a sweeping effort by President Donald Trump to eliminate DEI practices – designed to advance racial, gender, class and other representation in...

A Virginia Commonwealth University professor called for deplatforming right-leaning media figures and influencers to “disrupt capitalism.” Podcaster and blogger Dr. Karlyn Borysenko went undercover to report on the Male Supremacism Studies Conference. Dr. Kay Coghill, during a conversation at the conference, advocated for silencing those who hold conservative or Republican views.

There is controversy at George Mason University after Nicholas Decker, an economics PhD student published an essay asking “When Must We Kill Them?” in reference to Trump and his supporters. The essay captures the growing violent ideation on the left, fueled by rage rhetoric from politicians and commentators. The danger is that, for some on the extremes of our society, the question is not “when must we kill them?” but “when can we kill them?” On his Substack “Homo Economicus,” Decker warns that “evil has come to America” and that Trump is “engaged in barbarism” and seeking “to destroy the...

Elite universities push for federal funding while ignoring legal and ethical obligations, fueling public distrust as they prioritize ideology over academic rigor and free speech. Harvard has refused to accept the orders of a Trump administration commission concerning its chronic problems with anti-Semitism, campus violence, and racial tribalism, bias, and segregation. Yet, unlike some conservative campuses that distrust an overbearing Washington, Harvard and most elite schools like it want it both ways. They do as they please on their own turf and yet still demand that the taxpayers send them multibillion-dollar checks in addition to their multibillion-dollar private incomes. Aside...

A Washington State University (WSU) instructor and PhD student was arrested for allegedly assaulting an engineering student who was wearing a red “Take America Back” hat from the 2024 Donald Trump campaign, according to a police report obtained by “The Jason Rantz Show” on KTTH. The victim, Jay Sani, told Pullman Police that he was walking to a restaurant when the suspect, identified as Patrick Mahoney, grabbed the MAGA hat and threw it onto the street. After attempting to defend himself, the police reports say that Mahoney, along with a second suspect identified as Gerald Hoff, “grabbed Sani and took...

Their multibillion dollar hedge funds (endowments) should be taxed.

Any good accountant knows that when the organization pushes back against an audit they are hiding something. (Leftist) Harvard University professors are suing to block the Trump administration’s review of nearly $9 billion in federal contracts and grants awarded to the Ivy League school. The review is part of the government’s crackdown on what it says is antisemitism on college campuses. Via Reuters.