Free Republic

Bari Weiss has written an outstanding piece for City Journal about the ways in which wokeness has moved from universities to some of the country’s most exclusive prep schools. After speaking with parents and teachers at schools on both the east and west coast, Weiss concludes the woke revolution is already over. In fact, parents at these schools, aware their kids could be kicked out for any reason, are afraid to be identified as skeptics of critical race theory. This fear of being accused (or worse having your children blacklisted) is already so great that not a single person Weiss...

One in three conservative academics has been threatened with disciplinary action for expressing their beliefs, according to a new study that quantifies academia's liberal bias. Research from the Center for the Study of Partnership and Ideology released Monday shows that conservative professors and graduate students are "guaranteed" to face discrimination in academia. University of London politics professor Eric Kaufmann conducted the study, which he says is the first to focus on how academic authoritarianism threatens conservatives on campus. Kaufmann analyzed eight surveys of graduate-level professors and doctoral students, the majority of whom said they would not oppose discriminating against their...

We have just the perfect solution for American kids' deep ignorance about their nation's founding principles, system of government, and history. It's making them into political activists!It’s deja vu all over again. A coalition of government- and billionaire-funded nonprofits has a “bipartisan” plan for national curriculum goals, this time concerning U.S. history and government. Today this “state-led” coalition is releasing a major report they hope will get the attention of the Biden administration and state governors to “collaboratively” enact their vision nationwide. Remember, these sorts of national plans are supported by people on the right and left, so there can...

“Woke” culture is hardly even awake. It is a devouring force that means to eviscerate all excellence that has come before: The Greek classics. Chaucer. Milton. These authors are all white cisgender Western men -- enough said. A friend and I were wondering how long it would be before the Bard would also be cancelled. We did not have long to wait. In an article in the School Library Journal, librarian Amanda MacGregor conceded that Shakespeare was a “genius wordsmith” but that his work is full of “problematic, outdated ideas, with plenty of misogyny, racism, homophobia, classism, anti-Semitism, and misogynoir.”...

The man who originally created online encyclopedia Wikipedia is pledging to create a new platform to replace it, citing Wikipedia’s left-wing bias. Larry Sanger, who co-founded Wikipedia in 2001 before leaving the project, is describing his Encyclosphere as a networked aggregation of existing and new encyclopedia content, which will be distinguished from the colorful and unverified content slung onto Wikipedia by the site’s user base. Sanger envisions millions of people writing and submitting encyclopedia entries, which can be rated and judged for accuracy by their readers themselves, rather than the “arrogant and controlling oligarchy” Sanger maintains is running Wikipedia. Sanger...

Researchers have mapped an underlying “psychological signature” for people who are predisposed to holding extreme social, political and religious attitudes and supporting violence in the name of ideology. A new study suggests that a particular mix of personality traits and types of unconscious cognition – the ways our brain takes in basic information – is a strong predictor for extremist views across a range of beliefs, including nationalism and religious fervour. These mental characteristics include poorer working memory and slower “perceptual strategies” – the unconscious processing of changing stimuli, such as shape and colour – as well as tendencies towards...

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 Washington Post's lead story of Jan. 30, 2021, titled "'Be ready to fight': FBI probe of U.S. Capitol riot finds evidence detailing coordination of an assault" was written by Devlin Barrett, Spencer S. Hsu and Aaron C. Davis. It struck us as peculiar, or more particularly as a brazen example of systemic psychological manipulation. At the time when antifa and Black Lives Matter were burning and looting American cities last summer, did The Washington Post and the other major newspapers come with such headlines as "Who's coordinating and underwriting the looting and burning of American cities?" Obviously, they didn't,...

Cornell law professor creates online database of 220 universities teaching critical race theory to help parents choose colleges that don't make the 'racist ideology' mandatory - Cornell Law School professor William Jacobson has launched a database listing 220 universities and their approach to critical race theory - He claims the database will help parents choose a school for their children - Jacobson told Fox News' Tucker Carlson that the site is for parents who don't want their kids to be ‘indoctrinated’ by an ‘anti-racism ideology’ - He claims that critical race theory teaches student that the ‘most important thing in...

This week, Seattle Public Schools (and other area schools) are teaching students in kindergarten to pick their gender, combat a so-called hetero-patriarchal society, and disrupt the nuclear family structure. The lessons are part of the Black Lives Matter at School movement. The radical, political agendas on gender identity and the family structure have some parents livid. These topics are not age appropriate. Hoping for an alternative viewpoint to BLM talking points? There are none presented to students and it’s by design. Indeed, SPS believes them to be bigoted. Seattle Public Schools will spend this week promoting Black Lives Matter lessons...

Internet platforms like Twitter, Facebook and YouTube are not systematically biased against conservatives or right-wing viewpoints in their content moderation practices, according to an analysis from NYU researchers. According to the report released Monday, “False Accusation: The Unfounded Claim that Social Media Companies Censor Conservatives,” the allegation that social media companies engage in anti-conservative bias “is itself a form of disinformation: a falsehood with no reliable evidence to support it.” “No trustworthy large-scale studies have determined that conservative content is being removed for ideological reasons,” the NYU report says. “Even anecdotal evidence of supposed bias tends to crumble under close...

The American gentry seeks to squash conservatism, the free speech ethos of the university system, and intellectual diversity in our country. An article titled “Instructing Insurrections: How UChicago Can Avoid Creating the Next Ted Cruz” was published on Sunday in “The Chicago Maroon,” a nearly 130-year-old left-wing student newspaper at the University of Chicago. Replete with obnoxious Ivy League elitism, the article reads like an instruction guide on how to undermine the university’s renowned “Chicago Principles,” which guarantee free speech and open discourse on campus, and how to gaslight conservative students in the classroom. It is also a direct attack...

Joe Biden revoked a Trump administration order that had banned federal agencies, contractors and recipients of federal funding from conducting certain diversity training. The order had targeted workplace training that explored systemic racism and privilege, including 'critical race theory,' which former President Donald Trump had deemed 'un-American' and potentially harmful to white workers. The Trump administration had said the order prohibited training that implies anyone is racist or sexist 'by virtue of his or her race, sex, and/or national origin.'

Curators are gathering posters and banners from the riot and the protests that preceded it to “help future generations remember” Jan. 6, a museum director says. A sign that reads, “Off with their heads — stop the steal” and a small handwritten poster with the words “Trump won, swamp stole” are among dozens of objects and ephemera from pro-Trump rallies and the Capitol takeover Wednesday that are heading to the National Museum of American History, collected by curators from the division of political and military history. The museum, a branch of the Smithsonian Institution, announced Friday that it has begun...

USA Today is on the warpath against high schools with so-called racially insensitive nicknames. In separate stories, USA Today pressured Red Mesa High School in Arizona to drop “Redskins” and Robstown Early College High School in Texas to replace the nickname “Cotton Pickers.” There’s a big catch to these stories. Red Mesa is a predominantly Navajo school located on the Navajo Reservation. Located near the U.S.-Mexico border, Robstown is 94 percent Hispanic or Latino. Minorities quoted in the two stories are proud of their schools’ respective nicknames and resist politically correct efforts to erase them.

Over the years, Campus Reform has reported on hundreds of instances of anti-Christian sentiment at American universities. Here are five of the worst instances from this year. 1. Harvard University. Harvard Law professor Elizabeth Bartholet called for a ban on homeschooling, decrying “conservative Christians” in the process. In a Harvard Gazette interview entitled “A warning on homeschooling,” Bartholet attributed rising interest in homeschooling to the “growth in the conservative evangelical movement,” stating that “conservative Christians” use the practice to “escape from the secular education in public schools,” after a failed effort “to have their children exempted from exposure to alternative...

The Balkanization of college campuses. When he wryly observed that “During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act,” Orwell may well have had academia in mind, where challenging prevailing ideology can have a calamitous effect on one’s reputation and career—something especially true of faculty. In 1978, the significant Regents of the University of California v. Bakke case brought the term “diversity” into the lexicon of higher education Although the Court found that the medical school at the University of California at Davis had used an unconstitutional quota system in denying Alan Bakke admission, Justice Lewis Powell...

Muslim students at Duke University have organized a series of events to promote acceptance of homosexuality and other LGBTQ-related issues and to create a community for gay Muslims. The event series, called Queeristan, aims to connect LGBTQ Muslims to one another at the private university in North Carolina. It is a collaboration of the school’s Center for Muslim Life and the student publication Juhood Magazine. “As far as the CML receiving criticism here and there, the answer is yes,” Joshua Salaam, the center’s director, told The College Fix via email. The Fix had asked if the Muslim community had criticized...

Consultants cash in on radical changes to curricula nationwide In July, the leadership of Los Angeles's elite Harvard-Westlake School issued a 20-page confessional about the school’s role in perpetuating "racism and injustice" and promised changes. The school, which sends dozens of kids to the Ivy League every year, will now teach 11th-grade U.S. history from a "critical race theory perspective." And diversity consultancies, which routinely charge six figures for their services, will facilitate the school's transformation at every step. On the East Coast, the wealthy Fairfax County public school district shelled out $20,000 for an hourlong speech from critical-race commentator...

Multiple academic studies and critical analyses of Wikipedia have pointed towards the site’s left-wing bias. The findings include its content being more left-leaning than Encyclopedia Britannica and left-leaning editors being more active and partisan than right-leaning editors. Left-wing outlets have been found to be the top-cited sources and represent most citations on articles about American politicians, and right-leaning editors have at the same time been found to be six times more likely to face sanctions. Such studies and analyses validate criticism from the site’s co-founder, Larry Sanger, who earlier this year declared Wikipedia’s neutrality policy “dead” due to left-wing bias...