Free Republic

FIRST ON FOX: A new House Republican bill would send any person charged and convicted for illegal activity on a college campus to Gaza for at least six months. Rep. Andy Ogles, R-Tenn., introduced the bill on Wednesday alongside Reps. Randy Weber, R-Texas, and Jeff Duncan, R-S.C., in response to the ongoing anti-Israel demonstrations on college campuses across the country. Several of those protests have turned violent, with clashes between police and activists, as well as hundreds of activists being arrested across multiple campuses. While Ogles' bill text does not mention Israel or the anti-Israel groups, it specifically targets unlawful...

Survey comes after federal judge shouted down on campus More than one third of Stanford University students say using physical violence to stop a speech is acceptable in at least some circumstances, according to a new report. The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression conducted the survey after federal Judge Kyle Duncan’s speech on campus was shouted down last year. The report evaluated students’ perspectives about free speech on campus and protests in the aftermath of the event. FIRE Chief Research Advisor Sean Stevens told The College Fix the research found “considerably higher” support for canceling a speaker among Stanford...

Everyone knows college campuses have been ideological cesspits for years, but the Oct. 7 response is our chance to burn them to the ground.On March 9, 2023, the Stanford Law School chapter of the Federalist Society invited Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals judge Kyle Duncan to give a talk on campus. Duncan’s conservative and pro-life views aroused the ire of a mob of student demonstrators, who showed up to disrupt the event with signs bearing messages including, “Judge Duncan Can’t Find the Clit.” Protesters repeatedly shouted down Duncan as he tried to give his speech; one yelled at him, “We...

In the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, the computer HAL 9000 jumped the boundaries its creators set and took control of the vessel, killing most of the crew. Are we seeing a similar situation as the little campus Marxists, the ones whom the Democrats’ elites and intelligentsia created, burst out of their academic confines? Have their little minions escaped the lab, much as COVID-19 escaped Wuhan? As it turns out, the revolutionaries have broken free, but it turns out that they and their creators are as one.Or is it a smokescreen to mislead the public and to stall for time?...

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...