Free Republic

The greed and naiveté of our institutions could play into the hands of the Chinese surveillance state It goes by an innocuous name – “Integrated Joint Operations Platform” (IJOP) – but it’s one of the most sinister components of China’s surveillance state, managing what has been described as a genocide against the Uighurs. The IJOP combines multiple systems of repression – location, messages, contacts, social media and other data from phones, together with information from checkpoints, cameras and biometric records. It then flags “suspicious” individuals for detention and forced labor. Now leading US universities have been accused of extensive...

The Trump administration is moving to dismantle the federal student loan repayment plan known as SAVE, the last remnant of the Biden-era effort to provide large-scale student debt relief. The U.S. Department of Education announced on Dec. 9 that it had reached a proposed settlement with Missouri and six other Republican-led states that sued to block the SAVE plan. The plan still needs approval from the U.S. District Court of the Eastern District of Missouri’s Eastern Division. The states argued that the Biden administration exceeded its authority when it created SAVE in 2023, a program that offered millions of borrowers...

EXCLUSIVE - A North Carolina high school student said she was accused of vandalism by her school and told she was being investigated by law enforcement after she painted her school's "spirit rock" with a religious and patriotic tribute to slain conservative activist Charlie Kirk. According to a new complaint filed Monday and shared first with Fox News Digital, Gabby Stout, a junior at Ardrey Kell High School, called her school's front office on September 12 to ask if she could paint the school spirit rock with a patriotic message honoring Kirk, who was killed two days prior. Stout was...

The ABA’s left-wing bias targets Catholic law schools, exposing the need for reform in America’s politicized legal education system. Last month, Florida Attorney General James Uttmeier made public a letter to the American Bar Association (“ABA”) accusing it of violating the First Amendment right to religious freedom when it said a Catholic law school did not meet one of its equal opportunity accreditation standards. The school is Florida’s St. Thomas University College of Law, and the standard is number 205, titled “Non-discrimination and Equal Opportunity.” The ABA’s finding did not specify how St. Thomas fell short. Standard 205 is distinct...

California Gov. Gavin Newsom has signed a law requiring K-12 schools to provide gender-neutral bathrooms by July 2026.

Since the late 19th century, school yearbooks have been a ubiquitous and mostly unchanging element of American school life. Decade after decade, they deliver a predictable mix of class, club, and team photos, cheesy graphics, and cringey comments. But the most consistent feature of yearbooks may be what they don’t include—references to political upheaval or resistance movements. As public schools across the United States face heightened censorship and the threat of funding losses for noncompliance, school yearbooks remind us that there is nothing new about political censorship in schools. A few rare examples also reveal that there some students and...

Conservatives interested in higher-education reform often ask themselves where things went wrong. Answers usually range from the radicalism of the 1960s to the rise of social media or the triumph of critical theories in various departments and then the university as a whole. True, but the problem lies deeper, as well. Few are willing to trace today’s ills to the rise of the Progressive University or, what is the same thing, the making of higher education in the image of the modern research university. The modern research university is a source of pride among modern peoples. Commercials for universities during...

A prominent national conservative group is prepared to help fund the legal defense for Maine school boards that are bucking state law to bar transgender students from playing on sports teams and using private spaces that align with their gender identities. Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative legal advocacy group, will cover legal fees incurred in lawsuits filed by the Maine Human Rights Commission last month, the Livermore Falls-area school board chair told fellow board members at a Thursday meeting.

Italy is one of the few EU countries not to have compulsory sex education in schools despite evidence showing that comprehensive relationship and sex education helps to prevent violence against women and girls. The bill, which the lower house of parliament has passed, allows the teaching of sex education in middle schools, so for children aged 11-14, but only with written parental consent. The bill, which the senate would have to pass before it became law, is in line with the current procedures in high schools. Sex education is banned in primary schools. Opposition parties, which had called for sex...

A notebook detailed alleged attack plans against University of Delaware police, including multiple references to "martyrdom."A Delaware man has been charged with illegally possessing a machine gun after authorities uncovered a weapons cache and a handwritten manifesto referencing a University of Delaware police station and officer, according to a Dec. 1 release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office.Luqmaan Khan, 25, was arrested Nov. 24 after New Castle County Police officers found him parked illegally in Canby Park West late at night. Officers stopped his vehicle and, after he resisted arrest, searched the car. Inside, they found a modified Glock handgun with...

Students had protested ICE enforcement against Muslim terrorist supporters. Two questions. 1. Why is a Pakistani Muslim terrorist at the University of Delaware? It’s a losing proposition for America and doesn’t seem to have paid off all that well. 2. How long until officials and the media insist that Luqmaan Khan, like the D.C. National Guard Afghan terrorist, was just ‘sad’ and we need to be understanding of everything he went through… to try and kill us. A University of Delaware student has been charged with felony possession of a machine gun and had plans to attack the campus, police...

In the arena of champions, the greatest victories sometimes come not from defeating opponents, but from standing alone when the crowd demands your silence. For over a decade, the transgender debate has erupted from academic theory into a cultural battlefield, dividing families, destroying careers, and rewriting the rules of biological reality. What started as a push for tolerance has morphed into something far different—a movement that now targets society’s most vulnerable: our children.The issue should be straightforward, and honestly, it still is for anyone not drowning in academic gobbledygook. For millennia, humanity has understood that biological sex is binary and...

University of Delaware student arrested with car full of guns, plans to carry out mass shooting — and chilling note about ‘martyrdom’ A University of Delaware student was arrested with a car full of guns, body armor, and a manifesto that declared he wanted to “kill all” in a mass shooting on the Wilmington campus to achieve “martyrdom.” Luqmaan Khan, 25, was arrested on Nov. 24 after cops found the high-powered cache in his car where he was parked in a public park after class hours.

Earlier this week, in ‘Easy A’s for Ivy League Idiots’ I wrote about the massive level of grade inflation in the Ivy League. In 2005, a quarter of Harvard students received A’s. In 2025, it’s over 60%. At Yale, A’s went from 67% of grades in 2010 to 78% of grades in 2023. The prestigious university has had awkward moments like before, such as when 91% of students graduated with honors in 2001, and these days it tries to keep the number of honors graduates in the 50s. But much like shopping in a supermarket, it’s hard to avoid the...

The number of Gen Z college freshmen who are entering universities without high school math skills is skyrocketing — as SAT scores are plummeting, a stunning new report has found. Even more shocking — many of the students can’t even do middle-school level math, meaning their skills are fifth grade or below. Experts say this phenomenon, combined with steadily rising high school graduate rates, show that the country is suffering a massive grade inflation problem. The University of California San Diego, for instance, has reported a staggering 30-fold increase in the number of students unable to do basic arithmetic over...

An Alabama town angrily shot down plans to build a Muslim school in their area, with locals citing the 'cultural takeover' of Muslims in a Michigan city and as far away as the UK. Residents of Hoover in suburban Birmingham showed up in force at a zoning commission meeting Monday as the board voted on whether to allow the Islamic Academy to transform a local office building into a school and community center. Around 170 locals attended the meeting, with many opposing a motion to move the existing Islamic Academy in Homewood to Hoover. Citing traffic concerns and questioning the...

My 11-year-old son joined the elementary school band, and so I went to the parents’ orientation night held at a local high-school. As the night went on it became obvious why young men rage against the larger social system and why they might find a character like Nick Fuentes attractive. The classrooms were inundated with DEI messages and trans pride flags. On the walls there were posters, stickers and decorations that all invoked the various totems of diversity. Black Lives Matter messaging, decolonization messaging, LGBTQ+ messaging and basically every sort of race and gender social justice messaging you can imagine...

Graduate teaching assistant Mel Curth failed student on essay advocating Biblical values and traditional gender roles. A University of Oklahoma student who received a zero out of 25 on an assignment regarding gender norms says she was targeted for her Christian beliefs, citing a scathing response from the teacher's assistant who doled out the grade. Samantha Fulnecky is a junior pre-med student at the Sooner State's flagship university. "I was asked to read an article and give my opinion on the article, and the article was about gender binary and mental health and gender stereotypes, specifically in children, because it's...

An undergrad student is accused of plotting an attack on the University of Delaware Police Department after officers found weapons, armor, and a notebook containing "premeditated assault plans" and a diagram of the department during a traffic stop on Monday night. --SNIP-- Luqmaan Khan, 25, was arrested just around midnight after investigators say he was confronted by police while sitting in a pickup truck in Canby Park after hours.

Nearly 44% of the 16,000 truck driving schools in the U.S. may be forced to close if they lose their students after a review by the federal Transportation Department found they may not be complying with government requirements. The Transportation Department said Monday that it plans to revoke the accreditation of nearly 3,000 schools unless they can comply with training requirements in the next 30 days. The targeted schools must notify students that their accreditation is in jeopardy. Another 4,500 schools are being warned they may face similar action. Schools that lose accreditation will no longer be able to issue...