Free Republic

If I had known, 20 years ago, that my side in the ideological wars over gender and sex was going to win so decisively, I would have been ecstatic. Back then, I spent many evenings at the pub or at dinner parties debating gender and identity with other graduate students; or, really, anyone who would listen—my mother-in-law, my relatives, or just a random person unlucky enough to be in my presence. I insisted that there was no such thing as sex. And I knew it. I just knew it. Because I was a gender historian. This was, in the 1990s,...

Students who are searching for objective truth should shy away from any course with the word “Studies” in its title. Centered on opinion, persuasion, and propaganda, these courses seldom include rigorous evaluation of provable facts. According to the Hoover Institution, California’s educationists1 have been handed a defeat in their attempt to impose a wildly liberalEthnic Studies curriculum on their students. When the curriculum was circulated for public comment, its authors probably thought that it would be largely ignored. Full of educational jargon, curriculum documents are not easy to read, and seldom attract much notice. This time, an avalanche of public...

In the El Paso shooting’s wake, evident is same wash-rinse-repeat pattern. There are the inevitable calls for gun control by demagogues concerned only about people control, those who put the onus on whites when most mass shooters are non-white, and propagandists who blame the “Right” when most violence originates with the “Left.” It’s quite tiresome, really. In truth, the main underlying cause of increased mass-murder events -- and so much evil in general -- is a severe philosophical/spiritual malaise besetting our nation. Were gun control the remedy here, mass shootings would be rare. Not only were there fewer firearm laws...

In Hans Christian Andersen’s classic children’s tale, “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” we’ve heard a lot about an entire village cheering their naked emperor’s exquisite outfit, which didn’t exist.  But how so many people came to yield to an overt lie gets overlooked.  Rereading the story, I found it remarkable how Andersen used fiction to capture something very real in stubborn human nature; something that’s now driving the Democrat Party as we are dumbfounded by how they are so willing to believe things that aren’t true.  How a village became complicit in the biggest lie in the history of fairy tales began...

If you are an American college professor, the way you get a raise or tenure is by getting papers published in "academic journals." The stupidity of these journals says a lot about what's taught at colleges today. Recently, three people sent in intentionally ridiculous "research" to prominent journals of women studies, gender studies, race studies, sexuality studies, obesity studies and queer studies. "The scholarship in these disciplines is utterly corrupted," says Dr. Peter Boghossian of Portland State University. "They have placed an agenda before the truth." To show that, hoaxer and mathematician James Lindsay says, "We rewrote a section of...

Lara Logan, the journalist who gained wider renown covering war-torn spots in the Middle East for CBS News, is no longer with the network and has not been for several months. The split, disclosed as the result of Logan making an appearance over the weekend on a podcast in which she suggested news consumers ought to get information from both liberal and conservative outlets, might come as a surprise to outsiders. Logan had been working for “60 Minutes” and gained a reputation for visiting dangerous locales in Afghanistan and Iraq, often embedded with U.S. armed forces. She joined CBS News...

Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me. John 14:6 The cult of Marxism has to get stronger and more stringent for people to do what is against their own good. We have an economy which is getting better by the day and people still want to turn back to the economic malaise of Barack Hussein thanks to the worship of Global Warming. You see it especially well in the media as each and every talking head tries to outdo each other as they preach their...

Why does propaganda sometimes stick — and sometimes not? Consider the Catholic kids who got strict Catholic dogma in the 1940s and 1950s. Most of them moderated or turned away from Catholicism altogether. While the nuns succeeded in teaching them to read and write, they couldn’t stop them from thinking for themselves. Yet with today’s millennial generation, most of whom attended America’s government-run schools under the ideologically left-wing Common Core curriculum, it’s quite different. Young people are running with the left-wing brainwashing, well into their 20s, 30s and maybe beyond. As Invenstor’s Business Daily writes, “Americans’ heavy flirtation with socialism...

Some advertisers say they are leaving conservative host Tucker Carlson's show following his remarks that immigrants could make the U.S. "poorer and dirtier." It's the latest example of sponsors leaving a Fox News Channel show after controversy, but experts say the flap is likely to blow over. So far, the show's biggest advertisers appear to be sticking with him and his prime-time show, "Tucker Carlson Tonight." Carlson said last Thursday that there's pressure from "our leaders" to accept immigrants "even if it makes our own country poorer and dirtier and more divided." He added Monday that in the Southwest, "thanks...

University of Washington atmospheric scientist Cliff Mass has been called plenty of names, including climate “denier,” but it wasn’t until he came out against the state’s proposed carbon tax last month that he was accused of being a racist. Since then, Mr. Mass said he has been upbraided by the university’s diversity dean and subjected to a faculty “inquisition,” events that have stoked alarm about the threat posed by campus climate-change activism to academic freedom. “I’m really worried about the intolerance that has developed at the university,” Mr. Mass told The Washington Times. “It’s really a minority of graduate students...

A student senator at UC Berkeley abstained from a vote supporting transgender rights last week, then took a moment to explain her thinking. Now, more than 1,000 people have signed a petition demanding that she resign from student government or face a recall.

Much of the recent transgender news has revolved around anticipated changes to Title IX language intended to restore a scientific basis to interpretations of the words sex and gender. But there’s been another disturbing trend in the education community which bears keeping an eye on. At Redstate, Brandon Morse has a troubling report about the suppression of research work into the frequency of patients experiencing regret over having transitional surgery, seeking to have it undone and other emotional or psychological challenges they have encountered. And it’s an increasingly common phenomenon. Sex change surgeries for people who suffer from gender dysphoria...

A former professor at the University of Georgia claims that a math journal deleted a statistic study he did on the achievement gap between men and women at similar levels of intelligence after a backlash from board members who found the study too controversial for their politically correct values. The results of Professor Theodore Hill’s research is not exactly a positive one for men. According to his research, there are more men at the top and the bottom of the intelligence distribution. This phenomenon was first studied by Charles Darwin, who called it the Great Male Variability Hypothesis. While there...

If your teenage daughter suddenly declares herself transgender, should you assume she’s mature enough to make decisions that will permanently affect her health, fertility and future? Or could she be influenced by societal and peer pressure? Physician and researcher Lisa Littman doesn’t have the answer, but transgender ideologues are trying to silence her for even asking the question. Dr. Littman’s study about transgender-identifying teens was published in the open-source, multidisciplinary scientific journal PLOS ONE last month. Her interest had been piqued in 2016, when she noticed an uptick in parental reports that teens had suddenly insisted their gender identity didn’t...

Shockingly, academic studies show that liberalism has infiltrated academia and is corrupting higher education. Multiple recent studies from well-respected institutions have identified overwhelming negative repercussions that come as a result of the 'liberal creep in academia'... University of Oxford researchers found that conservatives have a “ right to be skeptical of scientists,” suggesting that skepticism of scientific establishments is valid due to a long and proven history of “scholar activism” in fields like sociology and political science. After all, there is no shortage of examples when it comes to professors teaching their opinion in the classroom and taking part in...

[Facebook Chief Executive Officer and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg speaks to the audience during the Facebook F8 2018 developer community event in San Jose, California, US on Tuesday, May 1, 2018.] A group of about 100 conservative Facebook employees have formed an internal organization whose aim is to combat a liberal company culture considered by many to be intolerant of different views. The group was started by a post on the social network company's internal message board last week, as reported by The New York Times on Tuesday. "We are a political monoculture that's intolerant of different views," posted Brian Amerige,...

“If you won’t play my way, I’m going to take my ball and go home!” One expects such behavior from 7-year-olds. Not from grownups. But that’s the behavior of 60 scientists, journalists, politicians, activists, and others who signed an open letter published in the (dependably sympathetic) Guardian Sunday saying, “we will no longer debate those who deny that human-caused climate change is real.” Why didn’t they just come right out and say, “Nya-nya-nya-nya-nya!” But they offer some reasons, or at least excuses, for taking their ball and going home. Let’s consider them. “We are no longer willing to lend our...

(Skip) The resulting sense of isolation and lack of collective action renders them [conservatives] increasingly vulnerable, reinforces the sense that one has to keep his head down to survive, and builds in the Left a false sense of unanimity that only reinforces their view that all sensible people share their views. Progressive activists interpret silence as agreement, and the lack of dissent only spurs more activism. It takes real moral courage to break the isolation, declare your beliefs, and seek to organize like-minded conservatives (and sympathetic liberals). It also happens to be the single most effective way of breaking groupthink...

In the competition of ideas, you can't win the game if you're not on the playing field. That's why Silicon Valley bigwigs' stubborn refusal to put business above their own personal partisan biases doesn't just rankle. It reeks. Equal access to social media is not just about sharing food pics, pet videos, makeup tutorials and travelogues. It's about ensuring the ability to disseminate and distribute political speech on the world's biggest platforms. Although I started in the metro newspaper industry in 1992, my years as an independent conservative blogger and internet entrepreneur have been the most journalistically enriching. I launched...

More Google employees are blowing the whistle about intimidation, discrimination, and dogma at the company following the firing of viewpoint diversity advocate James Damore. Breitbart News’ interview series, Rebels of Google, has revealed an atmosphere of profound fear at the company, in which employees who challenge Google’s hyper-progressive narratives face bullying and ostracization from co-workers, and frequently find themselves added to blacklists aimed at destroying peoples’ careers both inside and outside Google. Our last interviewee even described an incident in which someone was punched for expressing a contrary viewpoint. In our latest interview, current Google employee (alias “Gordon”) reveals more...