Free Republic

A civil liberties group told UCLA on Monday that the university should not stop a conservative student group from identifying demonstrators who protested a United States Department of Homeland Security lawyer’s campus event. The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression – which advocates for free speech on college campuses – condemned an email sent by Bayrex Martí, the assistant dean for student affairs at the UCLA School of Law, which encouraged the UCLA Federalist Society, a conservative legal organization, to not publicize protesters’ identities. About 50 people disrupted an event hosted by the Federalist Society that featured DHS general counsel...

SCOOP: The Madison Metropolitan School District in Wisconsin sent out a message notifying parents that May 1st classes will be canceled so teachers can join anti-ICE protests Your students are forced to lose out on their education so teachers can be left-wing political activists. SHUT IT DOWN

Meet Corinne Baum, a teacher at The Children's House in Cincinnati. She posted a video talking about how sad she was that she woke up to the news that Trump WASN'T ass*ssinated. This person teaches your children. You can contact the school here: (513) 898-3400

A man suspected of shooting two Chicago police officers inside a hospital room Saturday morning had been a fugitive for weeks, had two violent felony cases pending against him, had escaped from electronic monitoring, and was listed as an absconder by the Illinois Department of Corrections, according to court records and multiple government sources. The officers were standing guard over the man at Swedish Hospital, 5140 North California Avenue, when he gained access to a gun and shot them around 10:50 a.m., CPD Superintendent Larry Snelling said. On January 11, (Judge) Lyke then gave the man permission to leave home...

The Cougar Pride Center, which describes itself as an independent resource center serving Brigham Young University (BYU) students, hosted an event titled “Provo Pride” on April 11, which featured an LGBTQ pride march through downtown Provo, Utah, followed by a pride festival at Memorial Park. The event featured more than a dozen LGBTQ-themed vendors and a concert with several LGBTQ performers, including drag queen Colette Coins, who self-describes as an “argumentative antithetical dreamgirl” on Instagram. One vendor stand at the festival featured apparent Molotov cocktails for sale alongside a painting of Donald Trump’s severed head being served on a platter,...

It is so refreshing to see that this week Justice Clarence Thomas called out the "new" ideology of Progressivism. Here is some what he said: At the beginning of the 20th century, a new set of first principles of government was introduced into the American mainstream. The proponents of this new set of first principles, most prominently, the 28th president of our country, Woodrow Wilson called it progressivism. Since Wilson's presidency, progressivism has made many inroads into our system of government and our way of life. It has coexisted uneasily with the principles of the declaration because it is opposed...

In C.S. Lewis’s Till We Have Faces, Queen Orual writes the story of her life to indict the gods. “Being, for all these reasons, free from fear, I will write in this book what no one who has happiness would dare to write. I accuse the gods, especially the god who lives on the Grey Mountain.” The gods have been unjust, Orual believes; the story of her life is her complaint. In Part Two of the novel, Orual presents her case before the gods and receives their just judgement. As she does so, all of her self-righteousness falls away; the...

I am not a lawyer, nor am I a product of the American legal academy. But a patriotic higher-education policy cannot leave the legal profession to the lawyers alone. We all rely on them to manage the legal and constitutional operating system of the Republic. A patriotic higher-education policy assumes that the goal of government intervention in higher education is to make public and publicly privileged universities advance the cause of America. From that standpoint, there are two features of legal education that need to be taken into account. First, there is the external test of the quality of a...

As a professor of the classical liberal arts, I began reading Bob Pepperman Taylor’s new book, Liberal Education and Democracy, with interest. Taylor, who teaches law and politics at the University of Vermont, surveys a wide range of thought leaders, describing their foundational ideas in detail. One notable example is Taylor’s paraphrasing of Michael Oakeshott: “Liberal learning is learning to understand and perhaps even participate in a conversation that transcends a particular moment, a conversation that reflects on the human condition from a wide variety of times, places, and perspectives.” That’s well said. Taylor’s thesis begins with liberal-arts authors and...

News recently came out of Chapel Hill that the flagship campus of the University of North Carolina had adopted a new policy that allowed administrators to record class proceedings at will and without giving notice to professors. Predictably, faculty expressed serious reservations about what they perceived as a new climate of surveillance and aggressive oversight regarding the content of their courses. Perhaps also unsurprisingly, the pressure from faculty was enough to force the administration to scuttle the new policy. That’s unfortunate. Even before the policy was nixed, it wasn’t very intrusive: UNC stipulated that the practice would occur only in...

This spring, universities are hosting “UndocuGraduation” ceremonies for illegal alien students that are closed to the public and separate from traditional commencement ceremonies. Schools describe the ceremonies as “private” or “intimate,” likely out of deportation fears, requiring advance registration and only revealing the location to confirmed attendees. Many of these events are hosted by university resource centers for illegal alien students, which provide instructional guidance on how to handle interactions with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers to best avoid arrest and deportation. These centers also often provide taxpayer-funded legal services for illegal alien students. 1. University of California, San...

AI is here to stay, the experts say. Don’t fight it. Embrace it and give students a legitimate way to use AI in their writing. I’ve heard those claims since ChatGPT exploded onto the scene in late 2022 and sounded the death of the college essay. I’m an AI skeptic. As a historian, I know that teaching students to write and think for themselves is a crucial part of my job. But I’m also open-minded. As a historian, I know well the many examples of people resisting new technology simply because it’s disruptive—before embracing the same tech as an essential...

NEW: Marion County school resource officer strikes student athlete in head with stun gun during baseball game A School Resource Officer at Pee Dee Academy in Marion County, South Carolina, is under investigation after hitting a student athlete on the side of the head with a stun gun while trying to restrain him during a baseball game this week. The student was from the opposing team. Cell phone video and eyewitness accounts captured the incident amid multiple ongoing events at the game. The Marion County Sheriff’s Office has reassigned the deputy pending the outcome of the investigation, which has been...

As a general rule, when the government intervenes in free economic transactions in a market, it distorts that market and makes people worse off. We might not see such negative effects as clearly as we can see the benefits to those whom the government directly helps—the negative effects can be broad and indirect. But such disadvantages are real. Short-term Pell grants are no exception. First, the context: Pell grants provide college students with thousands of dollars per year based on their ability to pay, the cost of university attendance, and the degree to which a student is part-time or full-time....

Intellectual rot within universities has become increasingly obvious. It stems from the widespread adoption of critical, feminist, and queer theories in academic work. The result has been a constant stream of illogical, unscientific, and otherwise incoherent academic papers. Organizations such as the Martin Center, Do No Harm, the National Association of Scholars, The College Fix, and Reality’s Last Stand have been at the forefront of exposing all of this. I think there is more to expose, however, not just in terms of the total volume of this wrongheaded work but also in terms of its misdirected moral compass. Whereas critiques...

The UNC System’s new policy requiring public posting of faculty syllabi is grounded in a sound principle: Taxpayers deserve to know what is being taught at their public universities. Greater transparency strengthens public trust and reinforces institutional accountability. Under the new policy, faculty are required to include specific categories of information in their syllabi, and universities in turn must make those syllabi publicly available. This is not merely a suggestion of openness but a formal compliance obligation placed both on individual instructors and on the institutions that employ them. Yet, while the policy contains important improvements to current practice, it...

Earlier this year, a New York Times report described a dramatic reversal in global university rankings. In the early 2000s, American institutions dominated the tables measuring scientific output. Seven of the top 10 were U.S. schools, led by Harvard University. Only one Chinese institution, Zhejiang University, appeared in the top 25. Today, the map looks very different. Chinese universities dominate the upper tiers of rankings produced by groups such as Leiden and the Nature Index. Commentators talk about a new academic world order. Some declare American decline. Others announce Chinese supremacy. Both conclusions rest on a shaky premise: that modern...

The Lone Star State has done something rare, new, and needed: It has given its anti-DEI statutes teeth. As of January 9th, students, faculty, and university employees can now report violations of Senate Bill 17, a 2023 statute banning all Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) practices, to a complaint portal at the State Office of the Ombudsman’s website. A dropdown menu lists the six possible areas where Texas colleges and universities might sneak in DEI measures, ranging from the curriculum to hiring processes. Non-student citizens can use a separate portal to provide unofficial feedback and complaints. According to the complaint-process...

Instead of fighting over a 21-mile-wide bottleneck forever, we cut a new channel through friendly territory. A dozen thermonuclear detonations and you’ve got a waterway wider than the Panama Canal, deeper than the Suez, and safe from Iranian attacks. ...

In February 2025, a newly installed Trump Department of Education (ED) issued a so-called Dear Colleague Letter. The letter put educational institutions on notice that ED intended to enforce the nation’s anti-discrimination laws, particularly those in Title VI of the Civil Rights Act and in the Constitution. It further specified that “discriminatory practices” would not be tolerated merely because they had been repackaged “under the banner of ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ (‘DEI’).” Left-wing media pundits went berserk. They said the policy announcement was a “threat to equal opportunity,” called it an “extreme and implausible interpretation of the law governing diversity,...