Free Republic

NASHVILLE - Funding for colleges is threatened by a "growing political one-sidedness" on many campuses, U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander told higher education officials Friday. "How many conservative speakers are invited to deliver commencement addresses? How many colleges require courses in U.S. history? How many even teach Western civilization? ... Those are politically unacceptable topics," the Tennessee Republican testified before the Commission on the Future of Higher Education. The commission - created by U.S. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings this fall - met in Nashville Thursday and Friday and will hold similar meetings across the country during the next several months. By...

When the Supreme Court last term declared racial and certain ethnic affirmative action at colleges constitutional, the majority decision invoking the need for diversity omitted diversity of ideas. As The Chronicle of Higher Education (Sept. 24) reports in "Conservatives in a Liberal Landscape," at "left-leaning campuses around the country, professors on the right feel disenfranchised." Yet, Sen. John Kerry -- as quoted in the Sept. 17-19 New York Sun -- dismisses "the idea that there is an ideological bias on college and university faculties" as a fantasy of "conservative talk-show hosts."

While Americans and Iraqis cheered when Saddam Hussein was dragged from his spider hole in December, there were, obviously, a few notable exceptions. While Saddam loyalists and anti-American Arabs pouted in gloom and doom, back in the U.S. an anti-American poetry hit parade, entitled “My America,” was held shortly after Saddam’s capture. It was the grand finale of San Francisco State University’s fall semester. Even as TV screens showed the captured Hitler of the Middle East in all his pathetic, unkempt glory, the anti-war show on campus continued. As a part of the Creative Writing Department curriculum, more than a hundred and fifty SFSU students...

WASHINGTON - In a recent talk at Haverford College, I questioned the standard women's studies teaching that the United States is a patriarchal society that oppresses women. For many in the audience, this was their first encounter with a dissident scholar. One student was horrified when I said that the free market had advanced the cause of women by affording them unprecedented economic opportunities. "How can anyone say that capitalism has helped women?" she asked. Nor did I win converts when I said that the male heroism of special forces soldiers and the firefighters at ground zero should persuade gender...