Free Republic

Peter Boghossian has taught philosophy at Portland State University for the past decade. In the letter below, sent this morning to the university’s provost, he explains why he is resigning.Dear Provost Susan Jeffords, ​​I’m writing to you today to resign as assistant professor of philosophy at Portland State University. Over the last decade, it has been my privilege to teach at the university. My specialties are critical thinking, ethics and the Socratic method, and I teach classes like Science and Pseudoscience and The Philosophy of Education. But in addition to exploring classic philosophers and traditional texts, I’ve invited a wide...

A few years back, public schools in my hometown of Littleton, Colorado began using laptop computers in the classroom. With great fanfare every student was given their own computer. Classroom instruction quickly moved away from traditional teaching materials to primarily computer-based learning. This trend occurred throughout the country. We were told this would usher in a grand new world where student’s educational achievements would take off through the stratosphere. In a normal world, a major undertaking like this would only have been done after extensive research, testing, and actual results. And since we are dealing with something that will affect...

In reading the "overview" of Dr. Jill Biden's 2006 doctoral dissertation from the University of Delaware, I am reminded just how rotten, from top to bottom, are America's schools of graduate education. That a doctor of anything could write a sentence like the one that follows speaks to the historic worthlessness of most graduate programs in education: Three quarters of the class will be Caucasian; one quarter of the class will be African American; one seat will hold a Latino; and the remaining seats will be filled with students of Asian descent or non-resident aliens.An advisory committee had to approve...

"But we found out at about the same time that the American University of Afghanistan was not considered a priority by the US government, and we didn't fit the qualifications, evidently, of being at risk. I understand totally that American citizens, green card holders, and those who helped the US military should be prioritized. However, our university people are very much at risk, yet we failed to be in that category according to the US government. We have had to depend on private assistance and on the Qatar government over the past two weeks to get our students out. Now...

It's now difficult to understand where government ends and academia begins. And they're both leading us into the abyss. "Those who can do; those who can't teach." Most people who were born prior to the socialist infestation and eventual takeover of our education system probably remember that quote. It was written by George Bernard Shaw in 1903, a line from his four-act drama Man and Superman. It has been upsetting teachers and professors ever since, many of whom had a valid complaint about being included among the alleged non-achievers. Many fine teachers throughout history have helped positively shape young minds...

Recently, the dissemination of misinformation has become an important global issue. While the spread of misinformation is not a new phenomenon, the emergence of social media platforms that connect networks of people, who often have similar opinions and cultural beliefs, has exacerbated and amplified this problem. Although misinformation is often associated with political campaigns, the public health community has not been exempted from its negative effects. Characterizing the spread of science- or health-related misinformation can allow for a more critical and evidence-based analysis of misinformation and inform risk communication strategies during public health emergencies. During infectious disease outbreaks, effective communication...

President Biden's Secretary of State Antony Blinken has extended an invitation to two different United Nations Special Rapporteurs. One deals with contemporary forms of racism while the other is concerned with minority issues. Binken also welcomed "the UN Human Rights Council's adoption of a resolution that calls for action to combat systemic racism against Africans and people of African descent in the context of law enforcement

I recently submitted a manuscript to an education journal, a review essay of another scholar’s work. It opened with a compliment of the author’s “highly-praised and influential work.” To that statement, one reviewer of my manuscript asserted that I used “emotionally loaded language of incredulity, dismissiveness, and hyperbole.” More “tone policing” comments riddled the review, suggesting that even when my words might sound benign or complimentary, what I really meant was malevolent. There were several examples of another curious critique type as well: Raw declarations that my claims could not possibly be true, without any effort having been made to...

Expert researchers in STEM fields are already in great danger of being pushed aside by activists of the proper opinion. The rest of us will pay in the longer run Article content Hudlicky’s research productivity is admirable and rare. The mere fact that he obtained a position as a Canada Research Chair meant that his department, as well as the relevant federal governmental agency, both determined he was a fish well worth landing. Plus, the universities that hire researchers competent enough to be considered for a Canada Research Chair competition are not doing those they are attempting to recruit any...

A professor at the University of North Carolina Wilmington who openly called for members of the Republican Party to be blown up appears to be on track to keep his job. Dan Johnson, an associate professor at UNCW’s School of Health and Applied Human Sciences, posted “Blow Up Republicans” on Facebook on May 17, prompting several students to complain before the post was taken down, according to Campus Reform. A spokeswoman for the university, Andrea Monroe Weaver, told Campus Reform that “the university was made aware of the post and has appropriately addressed it," later confirming to the outlet that...

'In the classroom, free speech does not apply,' a workshop spokeswoman said. 'As instructors, we can tell our students no, you do not have the right to say that, stop talking right now.' According to newly released video footage, University of Oklahoma instructors want to punish students who defy campus orthodoxy. Their plan is to “avoid ‘a rhetoric of dysfunctional silence’ that closes ears to marginalized voices,” by — you guessed it — silencing marginalized voices. On Tuesday, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), a nonprofit focused on protecting campus free speech, publicized video footage of an April...

It only got worse from there as Yeonmi realized that every one of her classes at the Ivy League school was infected with what she saw as anti-American propaganda, reminiscent to the sort she had grown up with. "’American Bastard' was one word for North Koreans" Park was taught growing up. "The math problems would say 'there are four American bastards, you kill two of them, how many American bastards are left to kill?'"

Welcome back to Education Insanity, a weekly column updating you on the most insane events taking place in our nation’s schools. Here, we’ll delve into the growing presence of critical race theory, the ideology that claims that America is irredeemably rooted in racism, and “woke” culture. Let’s get started. 10. NYC Law School Makes ‘Systemic Racism’ Course A Graduation Requirement – Washington Free Beacon New York City’s Yeshiva University Cardozo School of Law — ranked 53rd in the nation — is mandating that students take a “race and the law” class in order to graduate. In an email to students,...

Should we be shocked that a so-called journalist is criticizing a legal process used by people to understand what their own governments are doing? Absolutely not.Brandy Zadrozny, a senior reporter at NBC News, is displeased with how American citizens have mobilized against critical race theory. Many are using open-records laws to obtain evidence of what public entities are doing with their tax dollars.To Zadrozny, people who seek to hold government accountable via the Freedom of Information Act—passed by Democrat President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1966—are participating in an “onerous” process. Well, is she in favor of governments keeping public information...

The controversial psychiatrist who said that she fantasized about shooting white people during panel at Yale University in April has doubled down on her attacks saying white people are 'psychopathic' in a new interview. Dr. Aruna Khilanani, who runs her own practice in Manhattan, delivered a talk titled Psychopathic Problem of the White Mind virtually to medical students and faculty back in April after being invited by Yale School of Medicine's Child Study Center. Khilanani made stunning statements during her talk, including admitting she has had violent fantasies about shooting white people.

Last month, former Dean of Students Lee Burdette Williams wrote a piece on her own Medium page about a weekend that changed her life back in 2016. Williams says she was invited to a weekend gathering by a group she had never heard of before called FACE. Essentially it was a group composed of parents whose sons had been accused of sexual assault on a college campus. But these parents believed their kids were being badly abused by a system that didn’t seem to have any place for the kind of rights of the accused found in our justice system....

As American educational institutions continue to be called into question, a North Korean defector fears the United States' future "is as bleak as North Korea" after she attended one of the country's most prestigious universities. Yeonmi Park has experienced plenty of struggle and hardship, but she does not call herself a victim. One of several hundred North Korean defectors settled in the United States, Park, 27, transferred to Columbia University from a South Korean university in 2016 and was deeply disturbed by what she found. "I expected that I was paying this fortune, all this time and energy, to learn...

Bowing to left-wing pressure, the Department of Justice will not even commit to defending religious colleges from a lawsuit that would force them to act contrary to their beliefs about sex and gender.The Biden Department of Justice briefly instigated outrage from progressives recently when it filed a routine legal brief promising to defend Title IX’s statutory exemption for religious colleges. The DOJ filed the brief to fend off efforts by religious colleges, some of whom are represented by Alliance Defending Freedom, to intervene in a lawsuit brought by 40 past and present LGBT college students who claim the exemption violates...

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed two pieces of legislation on June 7 designed to combat the influence of communist China in the United States.“If you look right now, there is no single entity that exercises a more pervasive nefarious influence across a wide range of American industries and institutions than the Communist Party of China,” the Republican said during a press conference in Miami.“All we are doing today is saying, ‘Enough is enough.’ We’ve got to start fighting back, and so the state of Florida is doing that,” he said.One of the bills aims to cut the Chinese Communist Party’s...

Since public schools are spectacularly successful leftist recruitment centers, weakening public attachment to them through lockdowns was a dangerous move for Democrats.Between May and October 2020, homeschooling more than doubled among U.S. households with school-age children, from 5.4 percent that spring to 11.1 percent that fall, according to new Census Bureau data. Black and Hispanic Americans were the most likely to switch to homeschooling, while white and Asian Americans were the least likely. This could be due to the fact that African-American children are the most likely to be financially locked into poor-quality school districts, or that black Americans have...