Free Republic

A former University of Virginia medical student can proceed with a lawsuit against the school over his expulsion — which stemmed from questions he asked about the nuance of microaggressions during a panel discussion that led him to being branded a threat, a federal judge has ruled.

Poking back at the wokesters. I heard of these people, but did not know who they were until now. These people were in academia and were disgusted with the woke culture and crazy new fields of study they were seeing. They decided to make fun of this by learning the terminology and writing crazy "scholarly" papers that were submitted to the leading publications in the woke fields of study. But, the papers got accepted, some were published and one got an award. During the peer reviews some of the comments were even crazier than what they tried to slip through...

The loss of public trust in universities that has risen to front page news did not suddenly emerge in 2020. In 2018 the non-partisan Gallup organization found that, for the first time, less than half of Americans have “a lot of confidence” in higher education. Even more pointedly, Gallup reported that “No other institution has shown a larger drop in confidence over the past three years than higher education.” The loss of civic faith in higher education has been building for a while. American liberal arts education has lost its moorings. A 2012 article in Inside Higher Ed crystallizes the...

Scholar republishes it on his personal blog: ‘I offer no apology for stating reality’ A lengthy column by a professor that critiques critical race theory and the concept of “whiteness” and “blackness” was removed by an online intellectual magazine after it generated controversy. Alaric Naudé, a linguistics professor at Suwon Science College in South Korea and head professor of its English Department, said his essay “Blackness, Whiteness and Other Mythological Creatures” was removed by the UK-based online magazine Res Publica. The publication bills itself as providing “an academic platform where ideas and concepts can be praised and challenged.” It did...

Diversity, Inclusion and Equity policies have shown that they have failed the test dramatically. Rather than provide a better environment for students. This initiative is undermining other areas of education that could greatly benefit students from lower socio-economic backgrounds. Evidence from a 2018 study shows that in the North American case, the percentage of enrolled students per ethnic groups have been fairly consistent from 1990 to 2015. The researchers, suggest more diversity instead of changing the approach. Is that really a wise choice considering the record that shows such diversity efforts are mostly ineffective? The question to ask then are...

The nation’s cultural elites have been gripped by an intense wave of moral panic since the January 6 riot at the United States Capitol. That panic has found expression in higher education in renewed efforts to curtail the speech rights and academic freedoms of the already near-extinct members of the campus community who dissent against woke orthodoxies. Attempts by activist faculty at Stanford University to curtail the independence of scholars at the Hoover Institution, for instance, reflect this new sense of empowerment. Clearly, the academic left has taken on a mission to eliminate all conservative and classical liberal critique, now...

That gasp heard after this ruling dropped comes from every college and university with a “free speech zone” and policies that impose heckler’s vetoes. Plaintiffs suing over restrictions on speech and religious expression on campus only need to establish “nominal damages” to gain standing, the Supreme Court ruled in an 8-1 decision, not necessarily actual damages. That opens up a vast new field of litigation that attorneys all across the country will rush to meet. The 8-1 ruling in Uzuegbunam v Preczewski from Justice Clarence Thomas does not actually settle the case in favor of the students, but the writing...

I first came into contact with Jordan Peterson a few years ago, before he became ill. I was stressed and not knowing who to talk to I wrote to him not expecting a reply. Yet, to my surprise I not only received a reply but also support that helped me through my issue. It makes a poignant illustration about the type of person he is. I do remain thankful and as a result, while I am really no one of any note, I feel I must plainly point out the propaganda and slander against him by Decca Aitkenhead of “The...

The left's failed attack on the Hoover Institution was a victory against the academy's intolerance. Yet most conservatives lack the same protection.Cancel culture is successful because of two basic assumptions. One is that all enlightened people within a certain community believe in the same things and that anyone who disagrees with any of the current leftist orthodoxies about politics, race, or sex is a heretic who must be shunned, shamed, and driven out of polite society. The other is that the cultural consensus is so strong that no individual or group of individuals can resist it.Armed with these factors, outrage...

Carl Hart is a Columbia University professor of psychology and neuroscience. He chairs the psych department and has a fondness for heroin – not only as a subject of scholarly pursuit but also as a substance for personal use. At 54, the married father of three has snorted small amounts of heroin for as many as 10 days in a row and enjoyed it mightily – even if, as he recalls in his new book “Drug Use for Grown-ups: Chasing Liberty in the Land of Fear” (Penguin Press), he’s experienced mild withdrawal symptoms “12 to 16 hours after the last...

The syllabus is such a basic document that most of us tend not to think much about what goes into making one. What are its necessary ingredients? A listing of the required study and reading materials, obviously. Dates of important milestones, like term papers and exams, as well. Lecture schedules, weekly assignments, and a rubric on how the assignments and exams factor into overall grades. Oh, and an acknowledgment—mandated by the institution—that your campus was built on land stolen from Indigenous peoples, and that your being there contributes to an ongoing intergenerational trauma. Wait, what? That particular hypothetical isn’t a...

Alan Jacobs’ new book, Breaking Bread with the Dead: A Reader’s Guide to a More Tranquil Mind, is a coaxing argument to read “old books that come from strange times.” Readers of his previous works The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction and How to Think will not be surprised that Jacobs, distinguished professor of humanities at Baylor University, brings intellectual heft to the self-help genre. Jacobs focuses on why we ought to pay attention to old books. There is no surprise in learning that such reading makes us deeper, fuller persons, and more humble. Ex post facto...

Loughlin was released from the federal lockup in Dublin, California, where she had been serving her sentence for her role in the college admissions bribery scheme, the federal Bureau of Prisons said. Her husband, fashion designer Mossimo Giannulli, is serving his five-month sentence at a prison in Lompoc near Santa Barbara, California.

In his book Bubbles and Crashes, Brent Goldfarb says a bubble is much like a stock that traders keep buying because others are doing the same thing. “This usually happens when a company or product has a compelling narrative around it that isn’t backed up by data,” Goldfarb writes. “They’re easy to invest in, there’s a lot of uncertainty about the future value, and it’s often about a lot of novice investors.” The student loan bubble checks all of these boxes. Americans have been hearing about a student loan “crisis” for over a decade, and there’s a reason for that....

Researchers from the Heartland Institute and Stopping Socialism created a list of the 50 most conservative colleges in the United States. Information such as surveys, cost, and enrollment were all considered when making the list with the goal of preventing indoctrination "with far-left ideas like socialism."Factors considered when compiling the list included surveys from Niche.com, which ranks colleges; Young America’s Foundation, Princeton Review, and experts at the Heartland Institute. Researchers also looked at enrollment and admissions information from various schools, and the cost of attendance.The top five are as follows:1.) Hillsdale College2.) Grove City College3.) College of the Ozarks4.) Liberty...

New York Times op-ed columnist David Brooks ignited a wave of backlash after insulting rural Americans who have no contact with the “expert class.” SNIP “Look at how much more Republicans are affected by conspiracy theories than the Democrats, so it can’t just be the internet, there must be some demand,” Brooks said, pointing out the “two core problems.” “A lot of people in the expert class live in blue cities who are thriving,” he claimed. “And a lot of people left behind in the rural parts of America, they feel threatened economically, culturally, socially and they have no contact...

I’ve never set foot on my elite women’s college campus, but that didn’t save me from my enraged peers when I announced, “If you support Trump, you are my friend. If you support Biden, you are my friend. If you feel the need to degrade those who feel differently from you...maybe we aren’t friends.” That’s all I said on my Instagram story, yet execrable messages began trickling into my direct messages from my peers. I was told that I was a part of the problem, and that nobody wanted to be friends with me. I was accused of believing that...

Critical race theorist Ibram X. Kendi declared this week that the expression “legal vote” used to describe votes cast in conformity with U.S. laws is “functionally racist.” “The term ‘legal vote’ is as fictionally fraught and functionally racist as the terms ‘illegal alien’ and ‘race neutral’ and ‘welfare queen’ and ‘handouts’ and ‘super predator’ and ‘crackbaby’ and ‘personal responsibility’ and ‘post racial,’” Kendi wrote on Twitter. When Kendi added in a follow-up tweet, “There are so many more terms like this. What did I leave out?” his woke followers jumped on the bandwagon, insisting that any terms questioning the Left’s...

In this election season it’s almost impossible to find pro-Trump bumper stickers or signs anywhere in my town. The reason is not lack of support but fear of vandalism, or worse: People nationwide have been physically assaulted and even threatened with loss of their livelihoods for no other reason than that they plan to vote as one half of the country does, and political goals are now commonly pursued by violent means. With this our civilization seems to be regressing to a more primitive stage of its development—a time when disputes were settled by force instead of rules, and before...

In a year when numerous faculty members who aren’t “woke” have been pilloried, and many universities are revamping themselves in accordance with the agenda of Black Lives Matter and Antifa, I was amazed to read an article by Harvard history professor Naomi Oreskes and her student, Charlie Tyson, who claim that research findings that university professors overwhelmingly lean to the left are wrong. Oreskes and Tyson published “Is Academe Awash in Liberal Bias?” in the Chronicle of Higher Education on September 14. Their piece violates common sense and misconstrues basic statistical reasoning.