Free Republic

A member of the Communist Party USA was elected this month to the Ithaca Common Council in New York on the Democratic and Working Families Party lines, defeating an independent candidate in a two-way race for the city’s Ward 5 seat. A November 7 People’s World report shared by the Communist Party USA confirmed that Hannah Shvets, a Cornell University student elected November 4 as an Alderperson, is a member of the organization’s Ithaca club. The report added that she also ran with support from the Democratic Socialists of America and its student affiliate, the Young Democratic Socialists of America,...

A young woman named Hannah Shvets, a Cornell student, was elected to the Ithaca Common Council last week. She is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and the Communist Party USA. She has also participated in anti-Israel protests, which is now standard for anyone on the left. The New York Post reports: Upstate NY city one-ups Zohran Mamdani by electing communist student, 20 The leaves aren’t the only reds upstate this fall. After socialist Zohran Mamdani won last week’s New York mayoral race, an upstate city has gone one better by electing a full-blown communist. Hannah Shvets,...

Shvets has taken part in numerous anti-Israel protests since Hamas’ terrorist attack on the Jewish state on Oct. 7, 2023, according to the CPUSA paper, People’s World, which celebrated her victory. Just two days after socialist Zohran Mamdani won the election for mayor of New York City, the city council of upstate Ithaca, New York, elected an actual member of the Communist Party USA to the Ithaca Common Council. Hannah Shvets, 20, a Cornell University sophomore and student organizer, defeated independent candidate and former Democratic primary hopeful G.P. Zurenda after winning the endorsement of the Ithaca branch of the Democratic...

Cornell’s student newspaper sparked furious backlash after it published a professor’s incendiary artwork depicting a bloodied Star of David and Nazi “SS” symbol scrawled on the back of a Palestinian person. The Cornell Daily Sun later took down the disturbing graphic after it was widely blasted as antisemitic, but the ordeal is raising concerns about a deeper cultural problem on campus. “To me, it reflects the normalization of Holocaust inversion, both on the internet and now on Cornell’s campus,” William Jacobson, a law professor who founded Legal Insurrection, a conservative publication, told The Post. “This [SS lighting bolt] graphic is...

So strong is the desire for “diversity” (at least racial diversity) in higher education that school and college officials often turn a blind eye to the law against racial discrimination in employment. The 1964 Civil Rights Act forbids racial discrimination in employment. It does not read that racial discrimination is illegal unless you think you have a good reason for doing so. Unfortunately, education leaders often act as if it does, engaging in blatant discrimination against candidates who don’t have the desired ancestry. A complaint recently filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission against Cornell University shows how audacious its...

Conservative law professor William Jacobson of Cornell University, publisher of the Legal Insurrection blog, appeared on the Jesse Kelly show this week and outlined an upcoming Supreme Court case for Trump that he describes as ‘very high stakes.’ The case has to do with the Trump tariffs, and depending on how the court rules, it could have a significant effect on Trump’s economic policy. Jacobson suggests that it could be a very close call. Transcript via Legal Insurrection: Kelly (00:05): The Supreme Court is about to begin another term. I don’t understand these terms. I don’t understand what they’re doing...

Business students at Cornell University who are not members of “marginalized or underrepresented groups” have been told to skip diversity-focused recruiting events, with a warning that attending could harm their career prospects and the school’s ties to recruiters, according to documents obtained by National Review.The directive was circulated in an email on Friday by the student council of Cornell’s Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management, the outlet reported. The council introduced the initiative as “Allyship in Action,” which it defined as “the active and continuous practice of using one’s privilege to support, advocate for, and stand with marginalized or...

The University of PennsylvaniaSarah Tishkoff, professor in the departments of genetics and biology at University of Pennsylvania, is collecting samples in Africa. Collaboration by University of Pennsylvania and Cornell University PHILADELPHIA –- People who identify as African-American may be as little as 1 percent West African or as much as 99 percent, just one finding of a large-scale, genome-wide study of African and African-American ancestry released today. An international research team led by scientists from the University of Pennsylvania and Cornell University has collected and analyzed genotype data from 365 African-Americans, 203 people from 12 West African populations and...

Three activists banned from campus for three years A professor was among several climate protesters who during commencement defaced the statue of Andrew Dickson White, one of Cornell University’s founders, as a message to stop the school’s “fossil fuel complicity.” Early Saturday morning, the group Cornell on Fire, a “coalition of Cornellians and community members calling for a just and comprehensive university-wide response to the climate emergency,” put a blindfold over White’s face along with a poster protesting Cornell’s association with the fossil fuel industry, The Cornell Daily Sun reports. According to a press release from the group, Scientist Rebellion...

A generation of Americans is being raised on half-truths and lies about the history of slavery in America. They are given the impression that America was uniquely bad and that American slavery was uniquely bad. They learn nothing about slavery elsewhere. Among the many lies they are told are that "black slaves built America" and that America is systemically racist. Since the only mortal enemy of the Left is truth, here are some truths about slavery. AMERICA'S SLAVERY COMPARED TO SLAVERY ELSEWHERE If you are interested in morality and committed to truth, you do not ask, "Who had slaves?" You...

Cornell University has invited Jew-bashing entertainer Kehlani to perform on campus May 7 — defending the move as just giving its students what they want. Kehlani has a music video that starts with, “Long live the Intifada” — an inflammatory phrase that critics say promotes violence against Israelis and Jews — shared a map online that eliminates the state of Israel and refused to condemn Hamas for the Oct. 7, 2023, massacre. The invite to the multi-Grammy Award-nominated R&B artist comes after the Trump administration froze $1 billion in federal funding to the upstate Ivy League school amid a civil-rights...

The federal government has frozen over $1 billion in funding for Cornell, according to members of the Trump administration. This comes amid an ongoing investigation by the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights. The move follows the slashing of more than $3.3 billion in federal funding from several Ivy League universities, including Columbia, Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania, Brown and Princeton. The Trump administration also froze $790 million in funding for Northwestern, according to The New York Times. ... A Monday evening statement from Cornell administrators explained that the University was “aware of media reports suggesting that more...

A Cornell University student who participated in pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel protests and was asked to surrender by US immigration officials says he was leaving the United States, citing fear of detention and threats to his personal safety. Momodou Taal, a doctoral candidate in Africana Studies and dual citizen of the UK and The Gambia, has participated in pro-Palestinian protests against Israel’s war in Gaza following an October 2023 Hamas attack. His attorneys said last month that he was asked to turn himself in and that his student visa was being revoked.

The people who are speaking out against deporting Cornell student Momodou Taal are falsely saying that this is about free speech.In reality, when the Ithaca Voice wrote an article about Taal, it included the following:https://ithacavoice.org/2024/10/cornell-halts-suspension-efforts-for-international-student-involved-in-job-fair-protest/Over 100 students and faculty were involved and unlawfully entered the Statler Hotel on campus to shut down a career fair where representatives from Boeing and L3Harris were recruiting. Protestors pushed past a blockade of university police officers to enter the hotel.First of all, please note the use of the phrase “unlawfully entered.” Trespassing is a crime.Second, please note that his illegal activity caused the cancellation...

A group of people continued marching and circling around the main gate of Columbia University on Monday afternoon, banging loud drums and chanting, "Long live the intifada." Their actions come shortly after Columbia University professors held what they called an "emergency vigil" in response to the college's agreement to implement a host of policy changes, including overhauling its rules for protests and conducting an immediate review of its Middle Eastern studies department following demands from the Trump administration. The group gathered outside the university's gates on 116th Street and Amsterdam Avenue, holding signs that read "defend democracy," "defend teaching" and...

**SNIP** "October 8, when I saw the protests in Times Square, and then I saw what was happening the next day on October 9, and at Harvard, where more than 30 student groups signed onto a letter blaming Israel on the attack on itself. And then we saw the same thing happen from campus after campus, from Columbia to NYU to Tulane to MIT, Cornell, Penn. It just felt like the world had lost its mind," she said. "The silence, the dismissal, the denial." "And so, by the end of October, I knew that I needed to document what was...

The Department of Education warned 60 colleges and universities Monday that they could be next to have federal funding taken away over antisemitic discrimination and harassment. Those named and shamed included six of the eight Ivy League institutions — Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Harvard, Princeton and Yale — and local schools Rutgers, Rutgers-Newark, Sarah Lawrence, three branches of the State University of New York, The New School and Wellesley. Monday’s announcement comes three days after the Trump administration’s federal antisemitism task force pulled back $400 million in grants and contracts from Columbia following monthslong Jew-hating demonstrations following the Oct. 7, 2023,...

Cornell University is encouraging international students and staff to return early from winter break in anticipation of President-Elect Donald Trump’s incoming administration. According to Cornell’s guidance, “it is a good idea” for students from the 12 countries targeted in Trump’s previous travel ban, such as Iran and Yemen, to return to the United States before the university’s semester starts on Jan. 21. Countries like China or India could also be added to the list, it says. The president-elect has pledged to enact a travel ban and revoke student visas from “radical anti-American and antisemitic foreigners.” The guidance also encourages undocumented...

‘We expected Hamas to kill Jews. We didn’t expect Americans to celebrate it.’Someone asked me the other day how I planned to commemorate October 7. I found myself speechless, befuddled by the question. How do you offer an elegy when the war is not yet over—and 101 hostages, those still alive and the bodies of the murdered, are not yet home? How do you remember a catastrophe when it is still unfolding? How do you mark a past event that feels as though it was a prelude to a much deeper darkness, whose dimensions we are still discovering? How do...

The radical Cornell University prof who lauded the Hamas terror attack on Israel as “exhilarating” and “energizing” dodged any punishment and is now back teaching at the upstate Ivy League school. Shamed history Professor Russell Rickford was out for the past year on “voluntary leave” after widespread public outcry when he was recorded at an off-campus anti-Israel rally cheering Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, invasion that slaughtered 1,200 Israelis. ““It was exhilarating, it was energizing ….I was exhilarated,” Rickford said at the time — before apologizing for applauding the mass murder of innocent civilians. ... Rickford is now teaching at least...