Free Republic

There is actually an organized group by that name, and they are mostly in public schools. "I have well over a thousand teachers engaging with the Teachers Who Pray network," Marilyn Rhames, the founder of that network told Rick Hess of the American Enterprise Insitute (AEI). "We have 131 school-based chapters, averaging about eight teachers per chapter in district, charter, private, and religious schools." "Most of our teachers work in traditional public schools, though you can say that we are 'agnostic' as to the types of schools we serve." Rhames had her own epiphany on 9/11 when she was working...

A trio of writers with credentials who managed to place dubious articles in academic journals are already being dismissed by academics attempting to downplay the prank. "Last week three scholars published an article reporting on how they had submitted over twenty fraudulent and purportedly ridiculous nonsense papers to various journals in gender and diversity studies," Hank Reichman writes on the academe blog maintained by the American Association of University Professors (AAUP). "Seven were accepted, four were published online, and three were in process when the authors 'had to take the project public prematurely and thus stop the study, before it...

The state of New Jersey has a new regulation in its Department of Education: a provision that prevents schools from informing parents of their child's preferred gender and gender pronouns. New Jersey became the eleventh state to have a specific gender provision in its state regulations, per NorthJersey.com. The local newspaper claimed that the rules are "intended to promote a safe and successful learning environment for [children]." The regulation, which was signed into law by former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, says that gender identity decisions reside with the student, not the parents, despite the fact that students are children...

It's what Harvard medical researchers call Trump Derangement Syndrome. "In a 2017 essay for a book co-edited by psychiatrists from Harvard Medical School and the Yale School of Medicine, clinical psychologist Jennifer Panning of Evanston, Ill., called the condition 'Trump Anxiety Disorder,' distinguishing it from a generalized anxiety disorder because 'symptoms were specific to the election of Trump and the resultant unpredictable sociopolitical climate,'" Matt Kwong reported for the CBC. "Though not an official diagnosis, the symptoms include feeling a loss of control and helplessness, and fretting about what's happening in the country and spending excessive time on social media,...

On May 22, 2018, the U. S. House of Representatives Government Reform and Oversight Committee examined the free speech crisis on college campuses. Since few universities do not receive federal funding, their interest is not inconsequential. One of the three academic witnesses they called--Brett Weinstein--identified himself as a "professor in exile" from Evergreen State College. Weinstein--like the other two witnesses the committee called on from academe--could distinctly be described as on the left of the political spectrum. Nevertheless, only one member of the trio—Shaun Harper of the University of Southern California—downplayed the free speech crisis. The other--Allison Stranger of Middlebury...

When millennials are polled, we see how badly history is taught. We write frequently about the carnage and chaos wrought by communism and socialism because somebody has to. "The University of Chicago’s GenForward Survey of Americans ages 18 to 34 finds that 62 percent think 'we need a strong government to handle today’s complex economic problems,' with just 35 percent saying 'the free market can handle these problems without government being involved,'" Steve Chapman writes in Reason magazine. "Overall, 49 percent in this group hold a favorable opinion of capitalism—and 45 percent have a positive view of socialism." "Socialism gets...

Perhaps the risk of being called heartless is making them headless. John Stossel of Reason Magazine claims U. S. Department of Education (DOE) Secretary Betsy DeVos is keeping hers. "It now spends $193.1 billion a year," he writes. "DeVos proposed a mere $9 billion in cuts." (Only in Washington is $9 billion "mere.") "But nothing goes away in Washington, no matter how wasteful," Stossel points out. "The Republican Congress ignored her proposed cuts and increased her budget by $2 billion." Stossel is absolutely right. I’ve read 30 years worth of hearings, Governmental Accountability Office (GAO) reports and even inspector general...

Most media outlets reported on the Government Accountability Office (GAO) study on disparities in school discipline without much follow up, but Manhattan Institute fellow Heather McDonald took a closer look at federal school and crime data and found the GAO study misleading, to say the least. "The GAO found that black students get suspended at nearly three times the rate of white students nationally, a finding consistent with previous analyses," MacDonald wrote in the City Journal on April 6, 2018. "The Obama Education and Justice Departments viewed that disproportion as proof of teacher and principal bias." "Administration officials used litigation...

And might never have but for two independent-minded economists–Walter Williams and Thomas Sowell. In his review of Sowell’s new book on Townhall.com, Dr. Williams makes note of two data points that make the discrimination nation narrative about the United States look questionable, to say the least: ~"A study of National Merit Scholarship finalists shows that firstborns are finalists more often than their multiple siblings combined. Data from the U.S., Germany and Britain show that the average IQ of firstborns is higher than the average IQ of their later siblings. Such outcomes challenge those who believe that heredity or one's environment...

One of the many ironies or paradoxes of life in academia is that freedom of speech never is more complex than when it is discussed by people who speak for a living. "In the spring semester of 2017, I was teaching a graduate level course on 'Gender Issues in Education,'" Elizabeth J. Meyer writes on the academe blog maintained by the American Association of University Professors (AAUP). "Since my research has included studying bullying and harassment and school climate issues, I work very intentionally the first day of class to set up an inclusive and welcoming classroom environment that includes...

If you ever wondered what it was like to teach in a high school in the bay area, a high school English teacher gives us a precious glimpse of what it is like in a blog on Quillette. "Last year, at my high school, the students enjoyed arguing if a hotdog is a sandwich, the millennial equivalent of asking how many angels can dance on the head of a pin," S. A. Dance writes. "The hotdog question made its way to the whiteboard in our staff lounge." "By the time I arrived, my colleagues had written their responses. Some argued...

The president of Yale is trying to assuage a public that is increasingly skeptical of the value of a college education today. "If we can first empathize with their concerns, rather than dismiss them as ill-founded or anti-intellectual, we will be better able to regain their trust," Peter Salovey said in remarks delivered at the Higher Education Leadership at Yale in January and excerpted in the Chronicle of Higher Education in March. To this end, he offered a string of assertions and three concrete facts, which were: • "A recent Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll found that the drop in...

And not from the dwindling cadre of conservatives there. "The spring semester got off to a somewhat rocky start at Princeton University when a number of students walked out of a class in reaction to the instructor’s conduct," Princeton Professor Keith E. Whittington writes on the academe blog maintained by the American Association of University Professors (AAUP). "Lawrence Rosen, the William Nelson Cromwell Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at Princeton and an adjunct professor of law at Columbia University, was starting a class that he has offered before, 'Cultural Freedoms: Hate Speech, Blasphemy, and Pornography.'" "Apparently as has he has done...

An increasing number of insiders say, contrary to the multitude of studies and seminars we've slogged through, that there is not a shortage of Science Technology and Engineering Majors (STEM) but a glut. "It turns out that new PhDs in science have a hard time getting a job like their mentor's: tenured faculty in a research university," John Staddon a Professor of Psychology and Professor of Biology, Emeritus, at Duke University writes in an essay distributed by the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal. "Fifty years ago, in my own area of experimental psychology, things were very different." "Postgraduates,...

The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (AAAS) is trying to prove that liberal arts majors are gainfully employed but they're not doing so all that clearly. For one thing, they call the report "The State of the Humanities 2018: Graduates in the Workforce and Beyond." What exactly is beyond the workforce other than unemployment and retirement? "While their unemployment rate has declined since the Great Recession, humanities graduates had a level of unemployment in 2015 that was modestly higher than the rate for the bachelor’s-holding population as a whole," the report proclaims. "The 4.3% unemployment rate among terminal bachelor’s...

On President's Day, we not only remember George Washington and Abraham Lincoln but also another president born in February. American presidents of both parties, all too often, need to be appreciated at a distance. Of the 20th Century chief executives, perhaps only Ronald Reagan holds up well under scrutiny. Truly, the more you know about him, the more there is to like. Even a few academics appreciate him. "Political scientist Andrew Busch conducted a content analysis of major presidential speeches from Lyndon Johnson through Reagan and found that Reagan cited the Founders three to four times as often as his...

And more reminiscent of The Wizard of Oz than the three Rs or even John Dewey. "In addition to the 937 students to whom D.C. officials improperly granted diplomas in 2017, a recent audit undertaken in neighboring Prince George’s County, Maryland, found that as many as a quarter of that district’s 2016 and 2017 high school graduates may not have met requirements," Brandon L. Wright writes in an article distributed by the Thomas Fordham Institute. "A year earlier, five veteran educators in El Paso were indicted on federal charges in connection to, as an FBI agent said, 'criminal conduct and...

Duke University historian Nancy MacLean, not content to do slap and tickle histories, has gone on to trivialize a malady that afflicts millions. "Nancy MacLean, the Duke University historian who wrote Democracy in Chains, the deeply conspiratorial and much-criticized biography of public choice economist James Buchanan, told an audience in New York last week that Buchanan and other early leaders of the limited-government movement 'seem to be on the autism spectrum,'" Robby Soave reports on Reason.com. "According to MacLean, there is a connection between autism and libertarianism, and that connection is not feeling 'solidarity or empathy,' and having 'kind of...

And predictably put the blame somewhere else. "Also, the premium increases for health insurance they want from us will cost us about $600,000 every year," Martin Kich of Wright State University writes on the academe blog maintained by the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) in a broadside against his university's administration. "Right now, we pay about $1.8 million." "$600,000 more would be a 33% increase! On top of higher premiums, they want to cut health benefits via increased co-pays, increased out-of-pocket maximums, and increased coinsurance. Needless to say, cuts such as these harm people who are already sick, defeating...

A Princeton physicist has shared an inconvenient truth of his own--climate change models are based on an alternate reality. "And I know they don't work," Princeton University physicist William Happer says in a video produced by Prager U. "They haven't worked in the past." "They don't work now. And it's hard to imagine when, if ever, they’ll work in the foreseeable future." "In the video, Happer argues that even supercomputers used to predict the weather and forecast future global warming aren't strong enough to capture the complexity of Earth's atmosphere, including cloud cover and natural ocean cycles," Michael Batasch, who...