Free Republic

In the years since Hamas’s October 7 attack, America’s universities have become moral barometers, and many have failed the test. At Columbia, encampments replaced classrooms. At Harvard, statements multiplied while courage evaporated. At Elon University, a small private college in North Carolina, something different happened: people talked.A recent feature in The Forward praised Elon as one of the few campuses where Jewish students felt secure and respected after October 7. The Anti-Defamation League gave Elon an “A” in its inaugural campus antisemitism report card - one of only two institutions nationwide to earn that distinction. Yet Elon did not achieve...

John F. Kennedy Jr., 20 years ago, predicted the rise of Donald Trump as a presidential candidate. Michael Berman, onetime partner of Kennedy on the launch of George, the political-pop culture magazine, recalled the prescient comments last week in remarks to note a six-figure donation he and his wife, interior designer Victoria Hagan, recently made to Elon University’s School of Communications. In 1996, Berman said, Kennedy flew a select group of advertisers to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate after an industry conference in Florida.

GREENSBORO, N.C. - Another question some of you may have had about Tuesday's election:What role did Libertarian candidate Sean Haugh play in the Senate race results? The answer may depend on who you ask. UNCG political science professor Thom Little said Haugh didn't make much of an impact. He told our Ben Briscoe the polls he looked at showed Haugh took more votes from Thom Tillis than he did Kay Hagan. But Elon university professor Kenneth Fernandez said the voters that supported Haugh did play a role in Hagan's loss. In a recent online experiment, researchers found two-thirds of Haugh's...

The Gallup poll released on Tuesday will probably be promoted by public school officials as evidence that they are doing a great job but the survey requires close examination. “In contrast to the public’s pessimistic view of [No Child Left Behind] NCLB, the poll finds strong support for the public schools,” according to Phi Delta Kappa International. PDK conducted the poll in conjunction with the Gallup organization. Clearly, the poll takers harbored an animus towards NCLB. Thus, it came as something of a surprise when PDK executive director Lowell Rose admitted, “Test scores have gone up and I credit NCLB...

Nearly half of North Carolinians are opposed to U.S. military action in Iraq without the backing of the United Nations Security Council, while support for John Edwards' presidential candidacy has increased slightly since October 2002. Those are among the findings of a new Elon University Poll, conducted Feb. 18-20 by the Elon Institute for Politics and Public Affairs. The poll sampled the opinions of 517 adults in the state and has a margin of error of ± 4.4 percent. While 67 percent of those surveyed support using military force to remove Saddam Hussein, the poll found opposition to the war...