Free Republic

While American universities may proclaim diversity as an exalted value, a recent study shows that the only freedom of thought that really exists on campus is "to believe the dominant political ideology. Other ideologies are marginalized." (Klien and Western. For full text of study, follow links below.) But Phil Mitchell doesn’t need a study to validate what he has experienced for over 20 years. "The truth is, universities are the most hostile, narrow-minded and intolerant environment in society," Mitchell said. Mitchell, 57, is a former history professor at the University of Colorado (CU) and a deeply committed Christian. He was...

Nowhere is the orthodoxy of political correctness more firmly established than on college campuses. Woe betide the unwary student who runs afoul of a certified victim group. While it's OK to pillory males, Christians, corporations or the military, any slight - real or imagined - that gives offense to women, minorities or homosexuals, for example, can bring on severe consequences. In this kind of environment, College Republicans at Roger Williams University in Rhode Island displayed remarkable courage in taking on the PC establishment. Their target was V-Day. No, not Valentine's Day, but Vagina Day, which has replaced, in feminist circles,...

Tenure in our universities is simply unlike any other institution in American society. Take the case of Ward Churchill at the University of Colorado. Because of his inflammatory slander of the September 11 victims, the public turned its attention to his status. We discovered that he did not have a Ph.D., created a Native-American identity, and appropriated the intellectual property of others — but was promoted to a tenured full professorship, protected by a lifetime contract. No equivalent for CEOs or for dishwashers exists. Journalists, politicians, lawyers and others who take unpopular stands also lack guaranteed jobs. Doctors do no not...

Today, former graduate student Scott McConnell filed a multimillion-dollar lawsuit against Le Moyne College in Syracuse, New York, because it expelled him from its education master’s program based on his personal beliefs. In January 2005, administrators summarily dismissed McConnell because he had expressed views that opposed "multicultural education” and had stated in an academic assignment that "corporal punishment has a place in the classroom.” Story Continues Below The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) took up McConnell’s case, reminding Le Moyne, a Jesuit college, that its actions breached its own promises to respect students’ academic freedom and due process....

Let us consider politics in terms of the two types of beer. It would be perfectly logical to proclaim that all beer is bad. But it would be idiotic to proclaim, for example, that lager is evil while ale is morally sound. It would be similarly illogical to proclaim ale evil and lager good. Let us now apply that logic to the two systems of totalitarian government jointly responsible for killing off 100 million or so innocent people in the 20th century. It is perfectly logical to argue that all totalitarianism is evil. But it's silly to argue that Nazism...

Jonathan Bean is a popular professor at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale — even though his libertarian politics don’t always coincide with his students’ views. A historian, he was just named Teacher of the Year in the College of Liberal Arts. But in the last two weeks, he has found himself under attack in his department — with many of his history colleagues questioning his judgment for distributing an optional handout about the “Zebra Killings,” a series of murders of white people in San Francisco in the 1970s. His dean also told his teaching assistants that they didn’t need to...

DePaul’s Jihad against academic freedomApril 18th, 2005 DePaul University in Chicago is one of the fastest growing universities in the country. It has become the largest Catholic-affiliated university in America. Muslim and Arab students are one of the segments of DePaul's student population that has seen the greatest increase in numbers in recent years. Although no figures are available, these students are an important source of revenue for the University, and many may well pay full tuition, making their attendance particularly lucrative. Perhaps in recognition of this market segment, the University hired Norman Finkelstein to teach in its Political Science...

Freedom of speech on many university campuses is being exercised with an increasingly liberal bias that is staking a worrisome monopoly on the free marketplace of ideas. Evidence of this bias is a new study published in the March issue of Forum, which showed that—by their own description—72 percent of professors in American universities and colleges are liberal and 15 percent are conservative. Hence, it is reasonable to question whether students are receiving a fair and balanced education. The concern is understandable. As stated by one of the study’s authors, Robert Lichter, “In general, even broad-minded people gravitate toward other...

Six weeks ago, a teacher named Phil Mitchell reluctantly spoke to me about his unjust and forced exit from the history staff at the University of Colorado after 21 years in the classroom. All the evidence, notwithstanding the tortured spin of CU and its defenders, was that Mitchell, a reliable and well-regarded instructor, was being "let go" because of conservative political and evangelical Christian beliefs. Mitchell, who by the time I spoke with him was exploring job opportunities in more hospitable environs, decided to come forward with his complaints about the lack of diversity that hampered any true ideological debate....

KALAMAZOO (NEWS 3) - The man accused of dousing former presidential candidate Pat Buchanan with salad dressing has pleaded not guilty in a Kalamazoo court. Samuel John Messick was arraigned on charges of disturbing the peace Thursday. He reportedly tossed a cup of salad dressing on the conservative commentator at a speech he was giving at Western Michigan University on March 31st. Buchanan decided not to press felony assault charges against the man. Messick will be back in court at the end of the month.

Security will be tight at University of St. Thomas on Monday when conservative author and commentator Ann Coulter speaks at 12:30 p.m. in O'Shaughnessy Educational Center auditorium, one block north of Summit and Cleveland avenues. Her topic will be "Liberal Lies About the American Right.'' Coulter's speech is open to the public, but audience members will be asked to check coats and book bags during the program.

After the University of Colorado's Ward Churchill scandal, you might think it's nearly impossible for U.S. universities to get rid of faculty members. It's not so. While it's true that faculty members can embrace terrorists, demean their victims, plagiarize the work of others, lie about their ethnic backgrounds for better positions and generally hold America and Americans in contempt, there is something they can say on the college campus that will get them fired. In fact, I can tell you very easily and succinctly what a college professor can do to get the ax on nearly any university campus across...

A speech about academic freedom turned into a "violation of First Amendment rights," according to Dana Cloud, a member of the International Socialist Organization. Six people, including one juvenile, were arrested Wednesday night after protesting David Horowitz's speech at Townes Hall at the UT School of Law. The Texas Federalist Society hosted the meeting and invited Horowitz, a right-wing advocate and author of the Academic Bill of Rights, to speak. Opposition groups were holding signs and speaking out during Horowitz's speech on Wednesday, but when they were told to stop speaking, some took out noisemakers to mark their disapproval of...

March 23, 2005 OPERATION ACADEMIC FREEDOM Capitol Rally for Academic Freedom to Highlight College Republicans’ annual Convention "We have the distinct privilege to be joined by an long list of leading Republican figures who will address us at various events throughout the weekend," said Mason Harrison, a sophomore at UC Davis and the Convention Director. Speakers include Sen. Tom McClintock, Bill Simon, Rosario Marin, David Horowitz, Ward Connerly, Assemblyman Mark Wyland, Senator Bill Morrow, former congressman Jim Rogan, actor/comedian John O’Hurley and possibly even Gov. Schwarzenegger. The highlight of the weekend will be a bipartisan rally hosted by CCR on...

Politicizing of schools continues By: RICK REISS - For The Californian Parents, keep the Pepto-Bismal nearby. Today while your children attend college, high school and even middle school, they will be subjected to more political indoctrination courtesy of another left-wing pressure group. Today's topic of indoctrination is homosexuality. This is brought to you by the activists at the "Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network." The GLSEN has declared today a "Day of Silence" to advance their homosexual agenda.

My Battle with the Thought Police By Hans-Hermann Hoppe Mises Media April 14, 2005 Readers of [Mises Economics Blog] probably know about my ordeal at my university, which has been covered quite extensively on this site and by the major mainstream press. Now that major combat operations have ended (to employ a phrase used by Bush in reference to Iraq...two years ago), I've had some time to reflect on what happened, why, and whether and to what extent I responded properly. And so here are my thoughts on this incident that took my career as a professor of economics in...

Liberals enjoy claiming that they are intellectuals, thrilled to engage in a battle of wits. This, they believe, distinguishes them from conservatives, who are religious fanatics who react with impotent rage to opposing ideas. As one liberal, Jonathan Chait, put the cliche in The New Republic: Bush is an "instinctive anti-intellectual" and his administration hostile to "fact-driven debate." In a favorable contrast, Clinton is "the former Rhodes scholar who relished academic debates." Showing his usual reverence for fact-checking, The New York Times' Paul Krugman says the Republican Party is "dominated by people who believe truth should be determined by revelation,...

If you've ever wondered how American universities can continue to allow political advocacy and indoctrination to flourish in their classrooms, consider the recent controversy over Columbia University's department of Middle East and Asian Languages and Cultures (MEALAC). In a documentary called Columbia Unbecoming, 14 Columbia students describe what they considered expressions of anti-Israel bias and intimidation in some MEALAC department courses. In response, Columbia's President Lee Bollinger last winter appointed a faculty committee to investigate the matter. This was the second committee the president appointed, the students and others having rejected the first committee's obvious attempt to brush aside the...

There’s a real demand out there for alternative programs and points of view on college campuses. If Steven Roy Goodman is right, the implications for the academy are immense. According to Goodman, who makes his living advising students who are applying to college, many families are now so fed up with campus p.c. that they’ve started to avoid the most egregiously left-wing schools. That means students are beginning to shun big-name colleges — where politicization is at its worst — in favor of less prestigious, but also less prejudiced, schools. For example, Columbia University seems to be losing applicants in...

ABIGAIL THERNSTROM once described the American college campus as an island of repression in a sea of freedom. The report of Columbia University's ad hoc grievance committee suggests that Columbia is such an island. On its face, the report presents findings and recommendations concerning allegations by Columbia students that they were subjected to intimidation and abuse by members of the university's department of Middle East and Asian Language and Cultures (MEALAC). However, the report is better understood as a directive to Columbia students to take without protest the poisonous medicine being administered by the anti-Israel, anti-American radicals who dominate MEALAC....