Free Republic

Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) said the ongoing pro-Palestinian college protests are “working against peace in the Middle East.” Fetterman has been outspoken about his support for Israel, saying recently that the pro-Palestinian encampments on college campuses were “pup tents” for militant group Hamas. Host Margaret Brennan asked Fetterman on CBS’s “Face the Nation” about the protests on Sunday, asking him whether he considers flying the Palestinian flag during the demonstrations to be antisemitic.

Protests continue to ravage college campuses across the country and spreading like a virulent malignancy. Many of the protests have descended into violence. Jewish students are being unlawfully denied entrance to their schools. School administrators cower in fear save for a paltry few. These are supposedly Pro-Palestine and anti-Israel protests. They may be, but it's a small part of much larger scheme. Two thousand have been made but virtually all of them are seeing their charges dropped and few really face the consequences of their actions. Outside professional agitators are among those protesting. 282 people were arrested in New York,...

A wave of bills combating “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) efforts on college campuses have made their way into several state legislatures this year. Bills introduced in states such as Utah, West Virginia, Arizona, Kentucky, Iowa, and South Carolina all aim to quell an agenda of racial discrimination and political litmus testing antithetical to higher education’s purpose. But not all of the bills are created equal. While each is designed to curb DEI practices, some articulate the restrictions with greater clarity and specificity. Additionally, some have superior mechanisms of oversight and accountability. A few institutions include provisions upholding viewpoint diversity,...

More university professors are joining the demonstrations roiling college campuses, both to voice support for Gazans and to defend their students’ right to protest. Faculty, many of whom are in their 60s and 70s and came of age during the era of Vietnam War protests, are pushing back against university presidents, accusing the leaders of heavy-handed and inconsistent crackdowns on free speech, and warning against a wave of authoritarianism some say has been creeping onto campuses for years. Professors in leadership positions are guiding calls for votes of no-confidence, spearheading classroom walkouts and visiting encampments alongside students. Many are facing...

Mohamed Abdou is a pro-Hamas “anarchist interdisciplinary activist-scholar of Indigenous, Black, critical race, and Islamic studies, as well as gender, sexuality, abolition, and decolonization” at Columbia University. Now, I don’t mean to pick on Abdou; it’s just that he happens to teach virtually every trendy pseudo-intellectual identitarian twaddle concocted by modern man. Ultimately, we make Abdou’s job possible. Nearly every student loan taken in the United States is either given by the government or fully guaranteed by taxpayers. This sounds wonderful in the abstract, since it allows every student a chance at higher education. The reality, however, is that we...

The recent wave of pro-Palestinian protests on college campuses came on suddenly and shocked people across the nation. But the political tactics underlying some of the demonstrations were the result of months of training, planning and encouragement by longtime activists and left-wing groups. At Columbia University, in the weeks and months before police took down encampments at the New York City campus and removed demonstrators occupying an academic building, student organizers began consulting with groups such as the National Students for Justice in Palestine, veterans of campus protests and former Black Panthers. They researched past protests over Columbia’s expansion into...

Seventy-nine people were arrested in connection to the pro-Palestinian protest at the University of Texas on Monday, according to the Travis County sheriff’s office. Seventy-eight of those arrested were charged with criminal trespass, and one person received an additional charge of obstructing a highway or passageway, said Kristen Dark, sheriff's office public information officer. One person was also charged with interfering with public duties, Dark said. Unlike last week, the University of Texas Police Department was not the lone arresting agency. Dark said the Austin Police Department is listed as the arresting agency for four protesters. The 57 people arrested...

The College Democrats of America issued a statement commending pro-Palestinian protesters for their “bravery,” hours after protesters seized control of a building at Columbia University. In its statement, the student organization of the Democrat Party said it stood “with the broad and interfaith coalitions of students” that were protesting and had established anti-Israel encampments at Columbia University, Harvard University, Yale University, George Washington University, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The statement read: There is nothing more American than the right to protest peacefully for what is right. The freedom of speech, assembly, and protest is not just one enshrined...

It's like someone out there issued an order ... It's getting to be a maelstrom out there, with weak university responses emboldening pro-Hamas campus protestors. Columbia University bought itself a boatload of trouble by ignoring its own deadline yesterday to make protestors clear out, although suspension notices were reportedly issued to some. Now pro-Hamas protestors are taking over school buildings and taking hostages. Last night, hooded men crawled up the university building known as John Jay Hall where the administrators work and got out hammers to smash glass to break into the building, barricading it with junked furniture, and taking...

The pro-Hamas demonstrations that have become the latest social contagion to afflict the nation, with “encampments” springing up on college campuses across the country to demand “freedom” for “Palestine,” show clear signs of being orchestrated. One telling indication of this is that a massive number of these allegedly grass-roots protesters have identical tents, as if some well-heeled leftist bought them in bulk with the intention of helping this allegedly spontaneous movement get going. The groundwork for what is happening these days, however, has been laid for years. These demonstrations are in large part the handiwork of the Middle East Studies...

It’s hardly front-page news that trust in higher education is at an all-time low. But what is overlooked is just how dire the situation is for small, private colleges with meagre endowments. Last year, for example, 14 of these institutions closed, the victims of plummeting enrollment. In the New York metropolitan area, some institutions have been forced to sell off portions of their real estate to stay alive. Such colleges’ plight is partially attributable to the falling birthrate since the Great Recession, but the far more important cause is the disconnect between what these colleges offer and what students want....

<p>We’re dealing with proto-Nazis here. They’re just wearing different costumes.</p><p>Wait, Did Ilhan Omar Really Say That About Jewish Students?</p>

A New Jersey college cancelled a “drag queen story hour” planned for faculty members’ children during “Bring your child to work” day when staff objected. Brookdale Community College had been planning a read-along event with a drag performer known as “Harmonica Sunbeam” for months before calling it off the night before in order to “respect the comfort levels of all involved,” school officials said. The reading event was supposed to be part of the Lincroft college’s “Bring Your Child to Work Day” last Thursday, NJ.com reported. “I did ask why, but I did not receive an answer,” Sunbeam told the...

Sometimes, good parents raise bad kids. It is possible to do everything right and still churn out a real piece of post-digested food. It happens. It just doesn’t happen very often, which is why it’s pretty easy to look at the mutant mob and professional protester class currently staging mini-Beer Hall Putschs they hope will weave together into a one, large real opportunity for them to murder as many white people, normal people, straight people, non-obedient people and especially Jews as possible. Fascists always have a real problem with Jews. So, where did all these bi-pedal piles of garbage on...

News coverage of the “protests” at our “elite” universities is focused mainly on downplaying, even justifying, rallies for terrorists and antisemitism, the DNA of such events. It would appear elitism now consists of academic and financial fraud as schools such as Columbia have canceled in-person classes for the remainder of the semester, relying instead on Zoom classes, the Covid “distance learning” alternative produces no learning, distance or otherwise. I suffered through that the final semester before I retired. I knew I was defrauding the public. Everyone knew it, but we had no choice. Our “elite” universities are choosing to defraud...

Over the past few years, numerous plagiarism scandals have rocked the world of higher education. Prominent public intellectuals and university scholars have been caught improperly citing passages or even straight-up wholesale copying from other scholars’ works in their academic writing. The most high-profile of these scandals involved Claudine Gay, the former president of Harvard University. She resigned her position under pressure due to her academic misconduct, which involved lifting quotes from other authors and not attributing other writers’ work. Many of Claudine Gay’s supporters were quick to minimize her actions. For example, D. Stephen Voss, associate professor of political science...

Two New York representatives are considering a bill that would send “antisemitism monitors” to visit college and university campuses that receive federal funding. Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) and Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY) are set to introduce the College Oversight and Legal Updates Mandating Bias Investigations and Accountability (COLUMBIA) Act, according to Jewish Insider. Under the bill, the Department of Education would be allowed to send a third-party antisemitism monitor, paid for by the colleges and universities, to university and college campuses that receive funding from the federal government.

If you are up on the latest trends in academia, you’ll know that “institutional neutrality” is in the news as more universities consider or adopt it. In my view, this is a good thing, as it maintains the role of the university as a neutral arena in which faculty and students can freely express and debate a wide range of viewpoints constructively rather than feel stifled when their university takes a public stance on a political or social issue. However, there is confusion within academia on what institutional neutrality means and how to implement it. The free-speech organization FIRE (Foundation...

The White House punted on Speaker Mike Johnson’s (R-La.) demand for President Biden to call in the National Guard to college campuses amid mass protests over the Israel-Hamas war on Thursday. Johnson visited Columbia University on Wednesday, the first of major pro-Palestine protests that have spread to dozens of college campuses around the country, and said that Biden should call in the National Guard to quell the peaceful demonstrations.

With the 2024 NFL Draft set to begin tonight at 8 p.m. ET from Detroit, here's my second and final attempt at projecting how Round 1 will play out.