Free Republic

As a professor of the classical liberal arts, I began reading Bob Pepperman Taylor’s new book, Liberal Education and Democracy, with interest. Taylor, who teaches law and politics at the University of Vermont, surveys a wide range of thought leaders, describing their foundational ideas in detail. One notable example is Taylor’s paraphrasing of Michael Oakeshott: “Liberal learning is learning to understand and perhaps even participate in a conversation that transcends a particular moment, a conversation that reflects on the human condition from a wide variety of times, places, and perspectives.” That’s well said. Taylor’s thesis begins with liberal-arts authors and...

News recently came out of Chapel Hill that the flagship campus of the University of North Carolina had adopted a new policy that allowed administrators to record class proceedings at will and without giving notice to professors. Predictably, faculty expressed serious reservations about what they perceived as a new climate of surveillance and aggressive oversight regarding the content of their courses. Perhaps also unsurprisingly, the pressure from faculty was enough to force the administration to scuttle the new policy. That’s unfortunate. Even before the policy was nixed, it wasn’t very intrusive: UNC stipulated that the practice would occur only in...

Men will be barred from using parts of an on-campus gym at the University of Southern California under a new initiative to make women and non-binary gym-goers feel more comfortable while working out. The Student Assembly for Gender Empowerment (SAGE) pushed for the new rules in partnership with the Lyon Center, a recreational facility controlled by the university. SAGE describes itself as a “programming assembly and intersectional feminist organization under the student government, committed to uplifting all voices oppressed by the patriarchy.” The plan excludes men from working out in portions of the Robinson Room at the Lyon Center on...

The University of Virginia fired its head women’s basketball coach, Amaka Agugua-Hamilton, in a shocking move after the Cavaliers made a surprise run to the Sweet 16, though reports suggest a toxic culture had developed within the program. Virginia had been coming off one of the program’s most successful seasons in recent memory – reaching the Sweet 16 for the first time since 2000 – when the school made the announcement that Agugua-Hamilton was out in a terse statement released over the weekend. But behind the scenes, Agugua-Hamilton was the subject of an internal investigation, USA Today reported. The outlet...

AI is here to stay, the experts say. Don’t fight it. Embrace it and give students a legitimate way to use AI in their writing. I’ve heard those claims since ChatGPT exploded onto the scene in late 2022 and sounded the death of the college essay. I’m an AI skeptic. As a historian, I know that teaching students to write and think for themselves is a crucial part of my job. But I’m also open-minded. As a historian, I know well the many examples of people resisting new technology simply because it’s disruptive—before embracing the same tech as an essential...

Illegal immigrants will no longer receive in-state tuition at Kentucky’s public colleges after a federal judge ruled the policy violated U.S. law and permanently blocked its enforcement. The ruling, issued by U.S. District Judge Gregory F. Van Tatenhove, hands a win to the Trump administration and Kentucky Attorney General Russell Coleman after they challenged the policy as giving benefits to those in the country illegally that federal law does not allow. The decision forces Kentucky’s higher education system to end the discounted rates after a months-long legal fight. The lawsuit argued the policy violated federal law, which states that, "an...

Intellectual rot within universities has become increasingly obvious. It stems from the widespread adoption of critical, feminist, and queer theories in academic work. The result has been a constant stream of illogical, unscientific, and otherwise incoherent academic papers. Organizations such as the Martin Center, Do No Harm, the National Association of Scholars, The College Fix, and Reality’s Last Stand have been at the forefront of exposing all of this. I think there is more to expose, however, not just in terms of the total volume of this wrongheaded work but also in terms of its misdirected moral compass. Whereas critiques...

The UNC System’s new policy requiring public posting of faculty syllabi is grounded in a sound principle: Taxpayers deserve to know what is being taught at their public universities. Greater transparency strengthens public trust and reinforces institutional accountability. Under the new policy, faculty are required to include specific categories of information in their syllabi, and universities in turn must make those syllabi publicly available. This is not merely a suggestion of openness but a formal compliance obligation placed both on individual instructors and on the institutions that employ them. Yet, while the policy contains important improvements to current practice, it...

Iranian leaders call the US the “Great Satan” and burn effigies of President Donald Trump in the streets — but that doesn’t stop them sending their kids over here to learn. Children of regime leaders and bigwigs are at prestigious universities across the US, including University of Massachusetts, New York’s Union College and George Washington University, The Post can reveal. Sources said allowing people linked to the regime to assume such influential positions could present a threat to US values. “I would think that there would be a security risk as Iranian academics have been critical in forming public opinion...

The Lone Star State has done something rare, new, and needed: It has given its anti-DEI statutes teeth. As of January 9th, students, faculty, and university employees can now report violations of Senate Bill 17, a 2023 statute banning all Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) practices, to a complaint portal at the State Office of the Ombudsman’s website. A dropdown menu lists the six possible areas where Texas colleges and universities might sneak in DEI measures, ranging from the curriculum to hiring processes. Non-student citizens can use a separate portal to provide unofficial feedback and complaints. According to the complaint-process...

In February 2025, a newly installed Trump Department of Education (ED) issued a so-called Dear Colleague Letter. The letter put educational institutions on notice that ED intended to enforce the nation’s anti-discrimination laws, particularly those in Title VI of the Civil Rights Act and in the Constitution. It further specified that “discriminatory practices” would not be tolerated merely because they had been repackaged “under the banner of ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ (‘DEI’).” Left-wing media pundits went berserk. They said the policy announcement was a “threat to equal opportunity,” called it an “extreme and implausible interpretation of the law governing diversity,...

In January, a change to UNC System policy that might appear to be merely administrative reopened a longstanding debate about the political oversight of academic knowledge. The issue concerns public access to syllabi—the documents that professors typically prepare for every course they teach, laying out the course’s goals, assignments, and schedule. The new policy stipulates that “each constituent [UNC] institution shall develop an online platform to house syllabi for each course offered in a given semester or session.” Many faculty have objected to the development. The North Carolina Conference of the American Association of University Professors—the main professional organization for...

The lefty student government at a local California university rejected a proposal that would grant its student body free subscriptions to The New York Times, citing issues with how The Times covered major world-happenings. “The New York Times has historically been a little bit problematic and controversial in their reporting and in their journalism,” student official Alya Hassan, who voted against the proposal, told the Fresno Bee. Hassan referenced its coverage of Israel and Gaza as one example, adding the organization lacked journalistic integrity for avoiding words like genocide, ethnic cleansing and occupied territory in its reporting. The paper has...

More junior colleges are offering four-year bachelor’s degrees in addition to two-year associate’s degrees, and traditional universities hate the competition. But while students and policymakers should welcome new options, junior colleges (also known as community colleges) have obstacles to overcome as they attempt to create reliable alternatives to four-year institutions. Over the last two decades, lawmakers in at least 24 states have adopted provisions allowing community colleges to expand their degree offerings to include four-year bachelor’s programs. Customarily, community colleges offer high-school graduates who are not prepared for four-year degree programs the chance to earn two-year associate’s degrees and offer...

There is a fundamental difference between how China and the United States view higher education. Grasping that difference is essential to national security. Top Chinese graduate students are cultivated with the expectation that their expertise will advance state priorities. So when Beijing sends its top students to matriculate at American universities, it is not pursuing benign cultural exchange; it is deploying strategic assets. Seen through that lens, China is using the American university system as a conduit for absorbing American know-how, extracting technical expertise, and moving valuable research and intellectual property back to China. The practical effect is that People’s...

Buried in new data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) is a bearish sign for a college education, the first time we’ve seen this in 50 years. Trade workers without a college education are gaining new advantages in employment stability and even in earnings. On paper, a college degree still earns more but that edge is slipping too.W. Scott McGill/ShutterstockThe Cleveland Fed explains: “For decades, college graduates have typically faced lower unemployment rates, found jobs faster, and experienced more stable employment than high school graduates without college experience. Combined with higher expected wages, these advantages reinforced higher education as...

Walk into almost any undergraduate classroom in the UNC System today, and one thing becomes immediately apparent: Men are often a minority. This is not something announced in orientation materials or highlighted in strategic plans, but it is visible in lecture halls, student organizations, and group projects across campus. What once felt like a subtle shift has become harder to ignore, raising a basic but surprisingly under-asked question about public higher education in North Carolina: Where have all the male students gone? When I arrived at UNC-Chapel Hill freshman year, I wasn’t thinking much about gender ratios, nor did anyone...

I reveal here that I have finally read a likable DEI book, one that I found so because—beyond any doubt whatever—this book will infuriate the DEI faithful. Make no mistake, I don’t like this book in the same way I might enjoy a Douglas Murray takedown of leftist shibboleths or a Thomas Sowell skewering of the economic-egghead fringe. Rather, for DEI proponents, it’s a realistic adjustment of expectations in a post-Floyd era, in which the ashes of DEI doctrine are being scraped from the floor even as you read this. Authors Kenji Yoshino and David Glasgow have at least one...

Placed prominently within President Trump’s controversial “compact” for higher education was a call to center merit in admissions. The president’s offer to universities, which followed more than a decade of battles over what factors to consider in admissions, has sparked new debates about the meaning and value of merit. In particular, some college-admissions officials have pushed back on the idea that merit exists or have said that they have more meritorious individuals than spots. The second claim is partially true, but the first is not. Many selective colleges offer even more selective merit-based scholarships, which shows that they have at...

Texas A&M University is ending its women’s and gender studies program, changing the syllabuses of hundreds of courses and canceling six classes as part of a new policy that limits how professors can discuss some race and gender topics, school officials announced Friday. The changes to and cancellation of courses comes months after a viral video of a student confronting an instructor over her lessons threw Texas A&M, one of the largest universities in the country, into upheaval. University officials tried to reassure the campus that the impacts of the new policy would be minimal, affecting only a small portion...