Free Republic

The Falcon 9 Booster Landing Team at SpaceX has been awarded the 2026 Neil Armstrong Space Prize in the Innovation category for proving that rockets could be recovered, refurbished and reused — a feat much of the industry once considered impossible. This video traces how that breakthrough happened, from early NASA and Air Force reusability research to the moment engineers watched a booster descend out of the darkness and land perfectly upright.Team members, including Jon Edwards, Yoshiaki Kuwata, Lars Blackmore, Shana Diez and Eduardo Valazquez, describe the persistence behind hundreds of engineers' work, and how those lessons carry forward into...

For decades, the American university has been drifting away from its most important purpose: giving students a common education in the knowledge and principles they need to become educated citizens. The core curriculum was supposed to provide that common ground. Instead, it became a collection of distribution requirements—a little History here, a little PoliSci there, a Science course somewhere else—with students free to assemble a curriculum that can have little coherence. That’s why UT-Austin’s decision to rethink its Core Curriculum deserves attention. UT is trying to bring back something that has been largely missing from higher education for a long...

Peter Berkowitz is one of those rare public intellectuals who doesn’t mind being on the “wrong” side of hot controversies—which is to say, he’s willing to clash with the “progressive” juggernaut. A former professor at Harvard and George Mason Law School, Berkowitz is currently a fellow at the Hoover Institution and a columnist for RealClearPolitics. His new book, Reclaiming Liberal Education in America, is a collection of his essays on higher education written between 2014 and 2025. They give the reader a comprehensive view of the problems that beset our colleges and universities. He writes, “The nation’s elite institutions of...

Three years ago, Governor Ron DeSantis established the Hamilton School at the University of Florida. According to The Washington Post, the school now boasts “50 professors, four majors, 69 classes this spring.” Similar efforts are afoot with the University of North Carolina’s School of Civic Life and Leadership and The Ohio State University’s Salmon P. Chase Center for Civics, Culture, and Society. Depending on your political perspective, these are either a promising effort to reform universities or, as The Post deems them, mere “conservative backlash” to combat “‘woke’ liberal indoctrination.” Media coverage on these centers tends to focus on their...

A Canadian woman comes here with her sister on a visa and mocks Charlie Kirk's murder, takes selfies of herself standing on our flag and gets doxxed by Americans incensed at her vile posts. Gets notified by ICE that she is to be deported Monday. And she lost her job................ Many other as well detailed in Angel's video.....

In the early years of the Classic Learning Test’s existence, we believed that our fight for acceptance as a college entrance exam nationwide would happen in admissions offices. We were wrong. The legacy tests have lobbied to weave themselves into myriad state government mandates nationwide, making the college entrance exam business as political as it is academic. Knowing this, the SAT and ACT are lobbying aggressively to try to maintain their political moat. In several states — including Georgia, Oklahoma, Texas, and more — they’ve hired lobbyists, even if one or both had not previously had one, and worked side-by-side...

Following the Hamas assault on Israel in October 2023, many American campuses erupted in turmoil—not due to the brutality of the attack, but in support of the Palestinian cause. In the minds of many American students, professors, and administrators, the Israelis are the aggressors and “had it coming.” Anyone who expressed support for Israel was apt to be harassed or even assaulted by pro-Hamas zealots. Jewish students were singled out for vituperation and taunts like “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free!” indicating a desire to see Israel wiped off the map. Encampments sprang up as activists...

As a biologist, Dr. Ari Berkowitz is concerned that more people aren’t aware of a fundamental fact about biological sex. We might expect that a biologist would insist on the objective nature of “male” and “female” as innate, fixed, and unchanging biological realities. Evolutionary biologist Colin Wright, for example, argues for sex realism, a position which, he says, derailed his plans to become a biology professor.But no. According to Berkowitz, “Biological sex is as nuanced as gender.” He’s written a whole book about it. The thesis is in the title: The Binary Delusion: How Biology Defies the Myth of Two...

Utah Valley University will cancel classes Thursday as the campus marks one year since Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk was assassinated there. The university said it is closing its public campus in Orem, Utah, to give students, faculty and staff time for reflection on the anniversary of his murder. TPUSA will return to the campus Thursday evening for its “Freedom Built to Last Memorial” at the UCCU Center. The event is scheduled for 6:30 p.m. and will also be livestreamed online. “The gathering will honor Charlie as a faith-filled husband, father, and defender of free speech with a memorial...

Recently, Luke Burgis, Entrepreneur-in-Residence at the Catholic University of America, posed a provocative question: “What is the strongest argument from the political Right AGAINST Great Books programs?” In my view, the Great Books is a fine program for lifelong learning. 15,000 people a year participate in discussion groups affiliated with the Great Books Foundation. By contrast, a parallel lifelong learning project—the daily two-pages-a-day study program of the Babylonian Talmud known as Daf Yomi—drew over 90,000 people (almost all of them men) to the official completion celebration of its seven-year cycle at MetLife Stadium, with a further 7,000 at the major...

The Trump administration is drafting a rule that would allow certain married couples with a stay-at-home parent to qualify for federal child care assistance of about $9,000 per child annually, according to people familiar with the discussions who spoke with The New York Times. The reported proposal would expand eligibility under the Child Care and Development Fund, a roughly $12 billion Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) program that currently subsidizes care for children from low- and moderate-income parents while their parents work, attend school, or participate in job training.Under the draft rule, a new category of “parent-based child...

“You better get ready for … war.” Across the country, radicals are openly planning for the next stage of their movement, and notably, the Democratic establishment is not part of their plans. Despite the talk of a “Big Tent Party,” socialists are riding high on a surge of support and talking purges and revolution. In Chicago, radicals gathered for a conference on Marxism during what many view as the heyday of socialism in the United States. The Democratic Socialists of America is now larger and more powerful than at any time in our history. Socialist candidates are winning elections across...

I was working in a public space when a nearby conversation caught my attention. One student told a colleague that she would be taking several difficult classes the next semester. He responded, “just use AI, and the classes will be really easy.” I sighed in disappointment. Approximately 80% of undergraduate students worldwide use generative artificial intelligence to help with their coursework. AI can be a powerful tool for students in higher education, but only if they have already developed the ability to read and write effectively and to think critically. These fundamental skills are best developed independent of generative AI...

FReepers just found this short on YouTube. Don't know what college it happened at or which prolife group this is. Point is a very unhinged, childish, embicle of a woman attacks the man because what he said offended her. This is the adults we are now dealing with. Yes the man called the police 🚓

The School of Civic Life and Leadership (SCiLL). At UNC, students hear this name in one of a few ways. One is “eww, that uber-conservative program that’s a waste of money and is trying to indoctrinate everyone.” A rare few respond with, “I haven’t heard of that.” But the vast majority just say, “oh…nice,” and immediately assume you’re a complete nerd. In all fairness, the last one might not be completely off. Yet none of these opinions completely describe the SCiLL program. SCiLL itself is intended to help students learn how to critically engage in civil discourse with people on...

The public exposure, resignation, and subsequent death of the British fabulist Jason Arday have reignited the longstanding (if not eternal) debate about the purpose of higher education in our society and whether it is fulfilling that purpose. On the one side, conservatives are frustrated because, to them, the Arday case is emblematic: universities today are overwhelmingly leftist; leftists dominate the humanities and liberal arts faculties, and leftists are rewarded for poor or even fraudulent scholarship simply because it reinforces the preexisting beliefs of their contemporaries and superiors. On the other side, progressives and other leftists insist that the pursuit of...

You’ve no doubt heard the expression, “That’s an idea so ridiculous only an academic could believe it.” It kept coming to mind as I read Professor John Staddon’s new book Inevitable Differences: An Inquiry into Human Variation. That individuals vary enormously in their talents and desires is an obvious fact, and yet many academics have become famous by declaring that individuals and especially groups must be treated as though they were equal. Staddon, an emeritus professor of biology at Duke University, takes a critical look at the obsession among “progressives” for engineering equality, particularly with regard to race. Why, he...

Anybody who still believes in the liberal arts believes that higher education exists for a higher purpose than putting graduates in jobs. At the same time, even the truest believer has to grapple with the real harm done to graduates who can’t get the jobs they need to pay for that education. In the face of perpetually rising costs and ballooning student debt, it’s hard to keep the faith. One response is to decouple higher education from the liberal arts tradition and reduce it to professional preparation. Several state legislatures have recently passed bills pushing public universities to cut programs...

Southern Methodist University will not allow a CAIR-Texas-promoted Muslim youth leadership symposium branded “Unapologetically Muslim: Youth in Action” to take place on its campus after reviewing the planned event and citing what the university called the State of Texas’ “current designation of the symposium’s organizer.” SMU announced the decision in a statement to The Dallas Express after DX requested comment about the September 19 Muslim Youth Leadership Symposium, which CAIR-Texas had advertised for the SMU campus. SMU says event will not take place SMU described the symposium as unaffiliated with the university and said allowing it to proceed on campus...

The mainstream media and leftist government bureaucrats are at it again, pushing panic, fear, and unverified headlines to control the public narrative, only to get caught red-handed when local officials demand basic transparency. During a high-profile press conference on Tuesay, Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, alongside state health officials and Penn Medicine Lancaster General Health, announced that two “measles-associated deaths” occurred in Lancaster County. The legacy media immediately ran with the headlines. Two people died FROM measles. Case closed. Get the shot. Blame the unvaccinated. Blame RFK Jr. There’s just one major problem: Local authorities have ZERO record of these alleged...