Free Republic

The University of Wyoming, Southern Utah University, Boise State University, and Utah State University have all forfeited their women’s volleyball games against San José State University, refusing to have their female athletes play against a biological male opponent that is on the school’s team.At six-foot-one, Blaire Fleming (formerly Brayden Fleming) is San José’s transgender-identifying volleyball player. The Californian team is 9-2 as of Oct. 11.Wyoming assistant athletic director Nick Seeman sent to The Center Square the school’s statement on forfeiting. The statement reads: “After a lengthy discussion, the University of Wyoming will not play its scheduled conference match against San...

Iranian operatives in the US fund and fuel hate on campus and spread propaganda across the country — and even get face time with friendly American elected officials, according to an alarming new report on extremism by George Washington University researchers. In one of the report’s concerning images, Vice President Kamala Harris is seen happily mingling with an imam at the center of the murderous regime’s influence campaign. An Iranian-born cleric who served as head of the Iranian Navy’s political-ideological office during the 1980s, Imam Mohammad Ali Elahi has deep, decades-long ties to his homeland, and has praised the Islamic...

One often hears liberal-arts professors, as well as college and K-12 administrators, advocating two ideas about academics in America: (a) the importance of a broad, well-rounded, liberal-arts education and (b) the equating of that education solely with the head, not the heart. In 1931, John Dewey chaired a national curriculum conference that declared the liberal arts important for “the organization, transmission, extension and application of knowledge” (emphasis added). That concept has given us the educational system we have today, and it is not what was promised. A “Well-Rounded” Education Don’t misunderstand my point; there is great value in a broad,...

Several university professors expressed concerns to the Atlantic about students who come to college unable to read full-length books. Assistant editor Rose Horowitch spoke to several teachers from elite schools like Columbia, Georgetown and Stanford, who each described the phenomenon of students being overwhelmed by the prospect of reading entire books. Columbia University humanities professor Nicholas Dames described feeling “bewildered” when a first-year student told him that she had never been required to read a full book at her public high school. “My jaw dropped,” Dames said. Some professors do find a few students up to the task, but described...

Tenure shields faculty members that promote harmful ideologies and fosters unaccountability, contributing to societal problems and declining trust in higher education.California Gov. Gavin Newsom just signed a law banning legacy and donor considerations in admissions at all private colleges and universities in the state. California is the fifth state to do so, following Colorado, Illinois, Maryland, and Virginia. Newsom praised the law, saying, “The California Dream shouldn’t be accessible to just a lucky few.” According to the Stanford Daily, 13.6% of admits to Stanford University in 2023 were children of alumni or donors. Inside Higher Ed reports that it was...

The groups holding these events are quite openly and publicly telling you who they are and what they believe, and that's important information to have.At various universities around the country, Students for Justice in Palestine and other pro-Hamas groups are holding events on October 7. Some of these events celebrate Palestinian "resistance," while others, throwing in a blood libel for good measure, commemorate a non-existent genocide of Palestinians by Israel since the war in Gaza began. Let's recall what happened on October 7, 2023. Thousands of Hamas terrorists, followed by "civilian" hangers-on, attacked border towns in southern Israel along with...

Things should be what they are, in higher education as elsewhere. Colleges advertising a liberal-arts curriculum should immerse their students in literature, history, and philosophy. STEM giants such as Georgia Tech should provide, to the extent possible, world-class labs. Community colleges should offer affordable credits to local residents. The University of Alabama should teach football. (I’m joking. Mostly.) This principle is particularly true for religious schools, which have a special obligation to be faithful to their stated purposes. Zaytuna College, a Muslim institution in California, should (and does) teach the Koran. Jewish Yeshiva University ought not to shill for “Palestine.”...

Texas A&M University is discontinuing its LGBTQ+ minor due to low enrollment, following criticism of the program from Republican lawmakers over what they called “liberal indoctrination.”The Battalion, the school’s student newspaper, reported last week that the university is cutting 14 minors and 38 certificates following an internal review that deemed them “low-producing” programs.The university slashed programs that awarded “fewer than five degrees per academic year and fewer than 25 degrees in five years.”The description of the LGBTQ+ minor on the school’s website states that it “prepares students to examine the ways in which gender and sexuality are socially constructed and...

As of July 2024, the American economy had 7.7 million job openings. This is up from less than 5 million a decade ago. In a recent interview Mike Rowe, the well-known host of “Dirty Jobs” said the pressure on young people to get expensive college degrees combined with the “harebrained” decision to pull shop class out of high school has resulted in an enormous debt burden and a widening skills gap. Rowe believes many of the vacant positions are for what he calls “dirty jobs” — blue collar work that requires training and experience in the trades rather than the...

Saturday was a study in contrasts as both campaigns had people out at college football games. Former President Donald Trump was cheered wildly at the Alabama-Georgia showdown. He had great fun with the people chanting "USA," and on top of all that, Kamala Harris failed miserably with her effort to troll him. The media had given a lot of coverage to the claim that she was going to have a plane fly over the stadium with a banner saying "Trump Punting the 2nd Debate"—but it never happened. The Harris campaign blamed the weather. But whatever the reason, it failed miserably....

Goodbye to ‘Marx at the Mall,’ ‘Global Transgender Histories,’ Dua Lipa Harvard has canceled over 30 fall semester courses encompassing 20 departments, but the History and Literature department took it on the chin the hardest. According to The Crimson, Hist-Lit Director of Studies Lauren Kaminsky said class offerings dropped from 19 to 13 classes after five lecturers either departed or chose to do something else. The canceled Hist-Lit courses include “British Soft Power from Shakespeare to Dua Lipa,” “Marx at the Mall: Consumer Culture & Its Critics,” “Global Transgender Histories,” “Indigenous Genders and Sexualities in North America,” “The Making of...

A women's college volleyball match has been forfeited amid controversy surrounding the presence of a transgender player. Boise State announced the forfeiture of Saturday's match with San Jose State on the school's athletics website without offering a specific reason. 'Boise State volleyball will not play its scheduled match at San José State on Saturday, Sept. 28,' read the statement. 'Per Mountain West Conference policy, the Conference will record the match as a forfeit and a loss for Boise State. The Broncos will next compete on Oct. 3 against Air Force.' **SNIP** San Jose State, meanwhile, declined to address the gender...

Abbey Ballentine, a student from Ohio’s Cleveland area, selected nearby Notre Dame College because it had everything she was looking for. It was a small, friendly campus with competitive Division II soccer and it was close to home. By late fall of 2023, just a few months into her freshman year, she heard rumors the school had financial problems. The official closure announcement was made early into the spring semester and the college closed its doors in May. Campus advisors and administrators helped students quickly find other schools within a reasonable distance that would honor their financial aid packages and...

Average course grades tend to be lower in some college subjects than others. Engineering and the “hard” sciences, for example, retain reputations for being “harder” subjects than the humanities and social sciences, even though a naïve observer could just as well assume that students in the latter subjects are smarter. Do score-average comparisons really matter, though, in practical terms? After college, most graduates will be compared to one another from within their chosen fields. A “C+” engineering graduate will still be chosen ahead of a “C-” engineering graduate, just as an “A+” history grad will be chosen ahead of an...

GETTYSBURG, Pa. (WHTM) — A Gettysburg College student is no longer enrolled at the college amid an investigation into a racial slur being scratched into another student’s body. Last week, the college confirmed that a slur had been scratched into the student’s body with a plastic or ceramic tool and that those involved were not participating in swim team activities.

Candidate Trump has disavowed the document (seriously or not). The former president may well lose the election. Nevertheless, the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 is a serious outline for governance in a conservative administration and deserves to be considered as such. Among the Project’s contents is a chapter on the United States Education Department (ED). The chapter, written by Lindsey Burke of the Heritage Foundation with substantial input from seven other education-policy notables associated with the 2025 Presidential Transition Project, provides an agenda for conservative education reform that is one part bold, one part thorough, and one part cautious. It is...

Anyone who is keeping up with the latest happenings in higher education knows that this year has seen many institutions backpedaling on DEI programs. From Florida limiting public funding for DEI at its colleges, to the University of Wyoming closing its DEI office, to schools in Kansas, Idaho, and Oklahoma enforcing bans and limitations, the public’s patience with the Left’s “diversity” schemes seems finally to be running out. In May of this year, the UNC System joined these ranks when the Board of Governors repealed and replaced Section 300.8.5 of the policy manual, thus effectively banning DEI offices, employees, and...

It's a given that the number of conservative professors on campus is very small. What few there are probably exist solely in the economics department or in a few cases the law school. Lately, the idea of viewpoint diversity (sometimes called ideological diversity) has caught on among people on the right, especially as more woke politics is being exported by universities. This debate may have peaked last year when university presidents were called before congress to defend their handling of pro-Palestinian protests, but the basic idea that universities discriminate against conservatives has been around for a long time. Now there...

While a substantial number of Christian colleges continue to maintain ties with Planned Parenthood, one pro-life organization is celebrating that over a dozen schools have taken action this year to address concerns about their ties to the nation's largest provider of abortions and cross-sex hormones for youth confused about their sex. The Demetree Institute for Pro-Life Advancement, a project of the pro-life advocacy group Students for Life of America, released a report highlighting the findings of its 2024 Christian Schools Project. The data for the report is based on research conducted throughout the 2023-2024 academic school year, culminating with outreach...

While a substantial number of Christian colleges continue to maintain ties with Planned Parenthood, one pro-life organization is celebrating that over a dozen schools have taken action this year to address concerns about their ties to the nation's largest provider of abortions and cross-sex hormones for youth confused about their sex. The Demetree Institute for Pro-Life Advancement, a project of the pro-life advocacy group Students for Life of America, released a report highlighting the findings of its 2024 Christian Schools Project.The data for the report is based on research conducted throughout the 2023-2024 academic school year, culminating with outreach to...