Free Republic

UC Davis Chancellor Gary S. May called Turning Point USA (TPUSA) founder Charlie Kirk a “proponent of hate” on Tuesday, ahead of Kirk’s speaking event at the school, and encouraged students to “neutralize and negate” TPUSA’s influence on campus. In a video message responding to students who are allegedly in “distress” over the upcoming event on campus, May bizarrely referred to Kirk as “a well-documented proponent of misinformation and hate,” and claimed he has “advocated for violence against transgender individuals.”

An interim chancellor has been chosen to lead the State University of New York system when embattled Jim Malatras leaves the job next month. The SUNY board of trustees Monday announced SUNY Oswego President Deborah Stanley has been appointed to the post effective January 15.

OK, we learned something new today. We’ve written a lot about DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) but we’d never heard of DEIBJ, which stands for “diversity, equity, inclusion, belonging, and justice” (how soon until we see DEIBJ+). The Skimm interviewed UC Berkeley’s new Vice Chancellor of Equity and Inclusion, Dania Matos, who describes the emotional toll of her $325,000 a year gig. At the time of her interview, she’d only been at UC Berkeley for about a month, so her typical day consisted of “holding informal and formal listening sessions focused on truth-telling, trust, and transformation.” The Skimm asked her...

The Social Democratic Party’s Olaf Scholz has been elected Chancellor of Germany, marking the end of Angela Merkel’s 16-year reign. Olaf Scholz, who was elected Chancellor of Germany on Wednesday, will lead a so-called “Traffic Light” coalition of left-wing parties, the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD, red), the Green Party, and the liberal Free Democratic Party (FDP, yellow).

Austrian Chancellor Alexander Schallenberg announced Thursday he is stepping down just two months after taking over from predecessor Sebastian Kurz, who stumbled over corruption allegations. Schallenberg, a former foreign minister, said he would leave office as soon as the conservative Austrian People's Party names a new leader. Kurz was the party's longtime leader, and some had speculated he might return as chancellor. But Kurz said Thursday morning that he was quitting politics entirely to spend more time with his family. Schallenberg took office in October following Kurz's resignation as chancellor. Austrian prosecutors had announced that Kurz was one of the...

Christian Democratic Union (CDU) leadership hopeful Friedrich Merz came under fire on Monday for a response he gave when questioned on whether he could imagine Germany having a homosexual chancellor. Merz, a candidate in the CDU election set to take place in December to find a replacement for Angela Merkel, who is stepping down — made the comment to German media outlet Bild. On the news segment named “The Right Questions,” Merz was asked whether he would have reservations if a gay chancellor were to lead Germany. “No,” Merz replied to Bild. “Concerning the question of sexual orientation, as long...

Hillary Clinton has been appointed as the new chancellor of Queen’s University Belfast, the college announced on Thursday. The former US first lady, secretary of state and senator, who has been a regular visitor to Northern Ireland going back to the first visit of President Bill Clinton in 1995, becomes the university’s first female chancellor. Ms Clinton, who failed in her bid to be elected US president, holds an honorary doctorate from Queen’s. She will serve as chancellor for a five-year term.

Hillary Clinton is to be the new chancellor of Queen's University, Belfast (QUB). She is the university's 11th chancellor and first woman to take up the post. In a statement, Mrs Clinton said it was a "great privilege" to become the chancellor of QUB. She takes up her role immediately and will serve for a period of five years. Mrs Clinton succeeds Dr Tom Moran - who died last year. While the role of chancellor is mainly a ceremonial one, securing Mrs Clinton will be seen as a coup for Queen's. The chancellor often presides at graduation ceremonies and is...

The co-director of a company that harvested data from tens of millions of Facebook users before selling it to the controversial data analytics firms Cambridge Analytica is currently working for the tech giant as an in-house psychologist. Joseph Chancellor was one of two founding directors of Global Science Research (GSR), the company that harvested Facebook data using a personality app under the guise of academic research and later shared the data with Cambridge Analytica. {snip} Chancellor is still working as a researcher at Facebook’s Menlo Park headquarters in California, where psychologists frequently conduct research and experiments using the company’s vast...

Berlin (AFP) - German Chancellor Angela Merkel told her party Sunday she will seek re-election next year, a move likely to be welcomed in many capitals as a sign of stability following poll triumphs for Brexit and Donald Trump. After months of feverish speculation, Merkel announced at a meeting with other leaders of her conservative Christian Democrats (CDU) that she would run for a fourth term, a decision they met with thunderous applause, party sources told AFP. Merkel, 62, has governed Europe's top economic power, which does not have term limits, since 2005. She is due to hold a news...

Laureate Education, a for-profit chain with a global reach, paid Bill Clinton $16.5 million between 2010 and 2014, Bloomberg reported last week. Clinton had served as an honorary chancellor for Laureate International Universities, a subsidiary of the privately held company, which is among the world's largest higher education providers. He stepped down earlier this year, after his wife, Hillary, officially launched her campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination. Laureate had not disclosed how much it paid the Clintons. But Hillary Clinton's campaign released the couple's tax returns on Friday, Bloomberg reported.

The F-word: CNN's MJ Lee has a useful round-up of Republicans who are deciding to unite around the "fascist" label. As she points out, a number of prominent voices in the Republican race have decided it's an appropriate way to characterize Trump's rhetoric. One is Max Boot, an adviser to Republican Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida and fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, who tweeted that Trump deserved the label:

Academia is hell. In the latest higher-education fad, students want "trigger warnings," according to The New York Times. It appears that some students are so fragile that they want university staff to protect them from big bad ideas. Students around the country say they want "explicit alerts that the material they are about to read or see in a classroom might upset them or, as some students assert, cause symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder in victims of rape or in war veterans." An Oberlin College draft -- now "under revision" -- for trigger warnings suggested faculty "be aware of racism,...

Germany—buoyed by its cadre of family-owned niche companies—appears to be weathering the global slowdown, countering fears that Europe's economic powerhouse faces a sharp downturn that could deepen the region's debt crisis. A pair of bullish reports, on German employment and manufacturing, were reassuring on Wednesday: Unemployment remained at its lowest level in nearly two decades last month, while July machine orders jumped 9% from a year earlier. The latest data suggest that Europe's largest economy, which is expected to grow 3% this year, remains resilient, even as evidence mounts that the U.S. and much of the rest of the world...

Isn't it fun to watch fat cats get fatter? On top of his $739,695 base salary, UCLA administrator David Feinberg -- who serves as both associate vice chancellor and CEO of the university's hospital system -- received a $218,728 "award" from the UC Regents this month for a job well done. That brings his yearly earnings to about $1 million. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, the regents approved Feinberg's bonus, along with roughly $3 million more in "incentive pay and raises" for top UC medical officials, on January 21.

The chancellor of UC Berkeley is drawing criticism for sending a campuswide e-mail that linked a Tucson shooting rampage with Arizona's crackdown on illegal immigrants and the failure of the DREAM Act. In the e-mail, sent Monday, Chancellor Robert J. Birgeneau condemned a "climate in which demonization of others goes unchallenged and hateful speech is tolerated." He continued, postulating on factors that may have motivated Jared Lee Loughner, the alleged gunman in Saturday's shootings, .. : "I believe that it is not a coincidence that this calamity has occurred in a state which has legislated discrimination against undocumented persons." ......

Unemployment in Germany fell below 3m in October for the first time in 18 years, according to unadjusted figures released by the federal labour office. The government in Berlin greeted the news with delight and saw it as confirmation that its measures to revive the economy from last year’s recession had been timely and effective. Seasonally adjusted jobless figures showed rather less improvement, with a decline of just 3,000 in registered unemployed for a total figure of 3.153m, or 7.5 per cent of the labour force. The figures were leaked on Wednesday, a day early, by Ursula von der Leyen,...

Pope Benedict has called on immigrants to respect the laws and national identity of their host countries. He said that every country had the right to regulate the flow of migration and immigrants had a duty to integrate.The Pope's comments are likely to add to the Europe-wide debate about integration of foreigners.The Vatican traditionally identifies with migrants and refugees and recently criticised France for deporting 1,000 Roma (gypsies) to Romania and Bulgaria.During the summer, about 200 camps were dismantled.The policy aroused a sharp response from the EU and prompted the Pope to tell French pilgrims they should "accept legitimate human...

President Nicolas Sarkozy of France plans to propose a new security and economic relationship between Europe and Russia when he meets with President Dmitri A. Medvedev of Russia and Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany this month in Deauville, senior French officials said Friday.

There was some interesting news breaking when St. Louis got its new archbishop: he announced was bringing along a woman who'd worked with him in Saginaw to be his chancellor. That's not unprecedented -- lay people have been allowed to fill that role since the 1983 revision of the Code of Canon Law -- but it's still out-of-the-ordinary. And the local paper has taken the time to profile the new chancellor-to-be: Nancy J. Werner is the first lay person, as well as first woman, to hold the post in the diocese’s history, which goes back to 1826. Only since 1983...