Free Republic

A pair of professors from Arizona State University wrote an essay which was published last week by the Chronicle of Higher Education. The gist of the article is that academics are overestimating the value of free speech. In fact, they come to the conclusion that free speech is a right-wing framing which ought to be rejected by colleges who, after all, have lots of experts on hand to determine what is and is not acceptable speech on a given topic. Here’s how they set up the argument:Whether and by whom free speech is under threat on campuses are hotly debated...

Campus carry exists when students can legally carry guns on university and college campus premises. The practice quickly becomes a non-issue, according to police chief James Terry of Marshall University in West Virginia. West Virginia is scheduled to join eleven other states where carry on campus by permit holders has been restored as a matter of law. West Virginia is scheduled to implement campus carry on July 1, 2024. From dominionpost.com: Marshall University Police Chief James Terry said the Action Learning Team is comprised of a cross section of all campus stakeholders and meets every two weeks on the issue....

Has wokeism jumped the shark? In other words, have the radical Leftists who for years have exercised increasing power in our universities finally gone too far? I dare to hope so. The recent disgraceful responses to the attacks on Israel that we have seen — from American university campuses to the streets of London and Sydney — have dramatically increased awareness that something is rotten in the state of higher education in the English-speaking world. Some of us have been battling against the ideological takeover of academia for close to a decade. Each year, we have been getting better organised....

Conservative commentator Candace Owens, who was suspended from YouTube last month for hate speech against the LGBTQ community, had dished out some blunt advice to students at a university in upstate New York. Speaking during the Turning Point USA Live Free Tour in Albany, a pregnant Owens addressed concerns that her very presence had made transgender students feel vulnerable. During a Q&A session, a student asked Owens, 'What do you have to say to the trans students on this campus who feel actively victimized by your presence here?' Owens swiftly replied, 'Life's tough, get a helmet, man, I'm too pregnant...

Trans influencer and biological male Dylan Mulvaney appears to be trying to cash in on his newfound infamy after sparking a national Bud Light boycott this summer by soliciting speaking gigs on college campuses. “Booking speaking opportunities for the upcoming 23/24 school year and would love to come visit,” Mulvaney told his 1.8 million followers in an Instagram Story on Wednesday, according to a report by the New York Post. The trans influencer also included an email address “for serious inquiries,” before signing off with “love ya!” Notably, the Creative Arts Agency’s (CAA) talent agency lists Mulvaney on its website...

I began teaching at the university level in June 2018, while I was still a graduate student at George Mason University. This upcoming year, I’ll begin a tenure-track assistant professorship at Nicholls State University in Louisiana. While it may be strange to have reflections on such a relatively short teaching career, I’ve found that my experiences contain nuggets of wisdom for the classically liberal educator. Much has been written about an illiberal turn in higher education. It seems one cannot open a trade paper or blog without reading stories about a tenured, well-respected professor getting in trouble or fired for...

ANALYSIS: The College Fix has reported on more than a half-dozen incidents in last 75 daysIt’s been a busy start to the campus hate-crime hoax watch this year. The College Fix has already reported on seven so far in 2023: two in January, three in February, and two more so far in March.Penn State officials recently announced that allegations its fans directed racist language at Rutgers University basketball players are without merit. An investigation into the Feb. 26 game found “no apparent racial slurs were used by Penn State fans,” the university reported.The incident mirrors a similar accusation against Brigham...

On March 1, 2023, Governor Jim Justice of West Virginia signed SB 10, the Campus Carry Act into law. The law goes into effect on July 1, 2024. Governor Justice was enthusiastic about signing the new law. He proudly described his growing up in West Virginia and told a story about hunting grouse with a 20 gauge shotgun, which was repaired by one of the people in attendance at the ceremony. West Virginia is the 12 state to remove bans on the carry of weapons at institutes of post-secondary education. Numerous members of the West Virginia Citizens Defense League (WVCDL)...

Campus carry has passed in West Virginia, which would let people with concealed carry licenses carry a handgun on public college and university campuses. Senate Bill 10 (SB10) received its final vote on February 21 and will now go to Governor Jim Justice’s desk.The opposition wants the Governor to reject the passage of the legislation saying it would cost too much money to monitor gun owners.“It is the intent of the Legislature,” SB10 stated, “to establish, by this act, conditions under which persons with a current and valid license to carry a concealed deadly weapon may carry a concealed pistol...

Majority of students opposed to bringing conservative speakers on campus, report found.. College students at America’s largest 203 colleges continue to censor themselves inside and outside of the classroom, a national survey of 45,000 students concluded. Students play a significant role in censoring free speech on campus, but colleges can enforce policies that protect it, according to the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression’s third annual College Free Speech Rankings, released in September, for the 2022-23 school year. Adam Goldstein, FIRE’s vice president of research, told The College Fix in an email on December 16 that the wider culture has...

With the start of classes at George Washington Law School, I have already had visits to my office of conservative and libertarian students asking if I thought they could speak freely in other classes without being penalized by professors. Despite teaching for decades, it is a question that I never heard from students until the last few years. It is now routine. It is the widespread fear of conservative students who have faced faculties with overwhelmingly liberal viewpoints and growing intolerance on virtually every campus. Now a new study at North Carolina confirms how conservative students routinely “self-censor” and do...

A shooting at a New Orleans university campus left one person dead and two others wounded, police reported on Tuesday. One female died from gunshot wounds while two males were injured following a shooting on the campus of Xavier University of Louisiana, which is a historically Black Catholic university. New Orleans police reported that officials responded to Xavier University’s convocation center after gun shots were heard in the parking lot just before noon local time. A high school graduation had just finished.

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Virginia — Former Vice President Mike Pence spoke about the importance of an active conservative movement in America’s education systems, telling Breitbart News, “One of the most important battlefields for the future is on the campuses of our colleges and universities.” Breitbart News sat down with Pence in Pavilion IV on the Lawn at the University of Virginia, part of Thomas Jefferson’s historic Academical Village, which he designed to be the physical representation of the “intellectual frontiers that lay open to discovery” — an apt location given the topics he was set to address later in the evening to...

More than 400 Yale Law School students — over 60 percent of the school’s student body — signed an open letter against free speech and a police presence on campus after hysterical woke students shouted down a bipartisan panel about civil liberties featuring the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF). Last month, nearly 120 woke Yale Law School students disrupted a bipartisan panel by trying to shout down and intimidate the speakers, who later had to be escorted out of the building by police. One of America’s best and brightest future Ivy League graduates screeched at the ADF representative: “I will literally...

The State University of New York at Brockport said in a statement that the possibility of "large numbers" of police officers on-campus during an event featuring a convicted cop killer could be "traumatizing," and is allowing students to skip class during the day of the event.

OnlyFans has guys on campus encouraging your daughter's to do porn for "financial freedom" - The colleges are lost. Don't send your kids there. https://twitter.com/BabeeHyeinK2021/status/1491931343080636457

The key feature of academic diversity ideology is the assertion that to be a member of an ever-growing number of favored victim groups at a college today is to be the target of pervasive bigotry on campus — despite, well, being favored. Taught by a metastasizing campus-diversity bureaucracy to believe that they are subject to an existential threat from circumambient bias, students equate nonconforming ideas with “hate speech,” and “hate speech” with conduct that should be punished, censored and repelled with force if necessary. This victimology fuels the efforts to shut down speech that challenges campus orthodoxies. Dozens of times...

Universities and colleges have responded to the pandemic with widely differing approaches from mandated vaccines to bimonthly testing. Amherst College however, stands out in its prohibition of off-campus travel without the express approval of the school. The rule has triggered a backlash by students.Under the college’s August 25 guidelines (active through September 13), “Students may visit the town of Amherst, masked when indoors, in order to conduct business (opening bank accounts, picking up prescriptions, etc.) during regular business hours, but may not go to restaurants or bars.” However, other “off-campus travel,” with the exception of travel to other nearby universities...

Students accuse professor of racism for criticizing antiracism “Would I please resign? No. Nope. Not a chance. Never gonna happen. No way. Haven’t even thought about it. Not for a second. No.” That was the definitive answer that Aaron Kindsvatter, a professor of counseling at the University of Vermont, has given to those on campus who are demanding he leave it. The professor made the statement in response to a petition titled “Demand the Immediate Resignation of UVM Asst Prof Aaron Kindsvatter.” The activists are upset that Kindsvatter recently made a video that argues antiracism efforts on campus in effect...

Michelle Rojas Tal is the granddaughter of a Holocaust survivor on her mom's side, and the daughter of a Puerto Rican non-Jewish father. She grew up in New York City, where she had pride in both heritages, and a full understanding that she was one of the Jewish people. She was 16 years old when the Twin Towers blew up across the river from her high school. While the events of 9/11 were a turning point in the young teenager's life, it was while in college that Michelle became an activist for Israel, when a professor claimed that the Israeli...