Free Republic

The Trump administration’s flurry of action on education reform creates space for states to chart their own paths. Efforts to abolish the Department of Education aim to “return education to the states.” Yet most conservative states have mostly been timid in embracing and building a better future for higher education. This is partly a fault of imagination, partly a lack of will. Florida led the way in both imagination and will. Many acts of the DeSantis administration presaged those of the Trump administration. Florida banned DEI offices, while the Trump administration is using national civil-rights laws to root them out....

The DETERRENT Act passed in a 241 to 169 vote. The Republican-led House on Thursday passed legislation to limit foreign influence in U.S. universities and colleges. The legislation mandates that schools have to report foreign gifts that are at $50,000 or more to the Department of Education. The legislation bans donations from China and Russia. “The lack of transparency around foreign relationships with our nation’s universities should concern every American as we see stolen research, antisemitic propaganda, and academic censorship," Education and Workforce Committee Chairman Tim Walberg said in a statement after the bill passed. "This is a major win...

The 2023-2024 school year is closing on a sour note. No one should be surprised. Numerous colleges are cancelling their commencement exercises. Where they don’t cancel them; numerous graduating students are choosing not to attend, out of safety fears. And on Sunday, May 12, comedian Jerry Seinfeld – as inoffensive a speaker as one can imagine in a politically-charged time – stood up to give an address at Duke University’s commencement ceremony, and hundreds of attendees booed him, with dozens walking out of the event in protest. (Just how many of these were graduating students, faculty and administrators versus how...

“Resentful childless harpies unconsciously longing for domination. Why else worship at the altar of Hamas? Why else would it be so overwhelmingly female?” — Dr. Jordan Peterson. Wasn’t it cute how the youngsters who “occupied” Columbia U’s Hamilton Hall — and were busy smashing things up inside — demanded restaurant-grade meals sent in to avert “starvation and dehydration” amongst their dauntless ranks? You could imagine a colossal mommy breast with three hundred nipples descending from the sky over upper Manhattan to nourish them back to action. “Feed me. . . !” It turns out, actually, that at least half the...

The University of North Carolina system oversees 16 state universities. Campus locations include Chapel Hill, Wilmington, Charlotte, Asheville, and Greensboro. UNC-Chapel Hill, originally called the University of North Carolina, was founded in 1789 and is one of the oldest public universities in the United States. According to Wikipedia statistics, some 245,000 students attended UNC system universities in 2021. One of the schools in the UNC system, UNC-Greensboro, is in the news these days because of a decision by Chancellor Franklin D. Gilliam Jr. to cut undergraduate and/or graduate programs in physics, mathematics, computer science, anthropology and nursing, citing “university direction,...

The Biden-Harris regime, consistent with its record of daily lawbreaking, has just illegally canceled another $1.2 billion in student loan debt owed by about 150,000 borrowers whose individual loans were about $12,000 each. This is just the latest, on top of three years of other incremental student loan cancellations, totaling about $138 billion in unpaid student loan debt so far, owed by almost four million voters, some of which is still tied up in court, but the regime’s actions have severely jeopardized the government’s ability to ever collect, even if these illegal acts are properly overturned. In some states where...

Fueled by political ambition and a distaste for the new left-wing ideological agendas that have taken root on many college campuses, activists and politicians have sought to alter the landscape of higher education in Florida. In many respects, they have succeeded. These reformers have focused much attention on New College of Florida, a public liberal-arts college in Sarasota that had a well-deserved reputation as a breeding ground of progressivism. The school’s extremism sparked the ire of Florida governor Ron DeSantis, who often says that “Florida is where woke goes to die.” According to DeSantis’s chief of staff, James Uthmeier, “It...

Quite a few scholars have written in favor of developing new institutions of higher education, since most of our current ones have been captured by ideological activists. For example, in this Martin Center article, Robert Wright advocates a “parallel university system.” On that score, there is some good news—it’s happening. The Universidad de las Hespérides is a start-up, online, classical-liberal endeavor. It is an exciting exercise in academic entrepreneurship, combining virtual courses for students around the globe, a blend of synchronous and asynchronous classes, and rigorous scientific inquiry that is firmly based in an appreciation for the philosophical and institutional...

Leaders of elite schools disgrace themselves before Congress—and expose the rot at the core of American higher education. Forget Ridley Scott’s Napoleon, now in theaters: if you want to watch an epic drama of vanity and failed leadership that ends in catastrophe, just tune in to the hearing held this week by the House Committee on Education and the Workforce. Summoned to account for the surging anti-Semitism on their campuses, the presidents of Harvard, MIT, and the University of Pennsylvania delivered a masterclass in obfuscation. When New York representative Elise Stefanik asked them whether calling for the genocide of the...

Anti-Israel protests at American universities have made headlines in the aftermath of Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack. And almost simultaneously, many conservative critics — including GOP presidential candidates — have used those protests as an opportunity to ramp up their assault on higher education, eagerly yoking them to their long-standing accusations of “liberal indoctrination.” Eliminationist chants, partisan DEI officers, angry mobs hey-hey, ho-ho-ing their support for terrorists — in terms of Republican's favorite straw men, the “woke,” liberal campus of 2023 has them all! Institutions of higher education, conservatives charge, are complicit in fostering an atmosphere of intimidation and even violence...

Matthew Giffin, a student at Middle Tennessee State University: "As editor-in-chief of my student newspaper, I tried to publish a profile of a student worried about his friends in Israel. The fallout was typical." The newspaper forced him out after publishing a statement claiming he "failed to report on the casualties the Palestinian people have suffered and focused only on damage done to the Israeli population.”

Northwestern University is in the news these days. Normally, that makes them happy. An allegedly prestigious, globally-renowned research university certainly ought to make the news all the time – with revelations of scientific discoveries, medical breakthroughs, or career announcements about proud alumni. Not today, however. Northwestern is in the news because of a rash of reports – some uncorroborated, some perhaps exaggerated or understated, some likely perfectly accurate – of various types of hazing and otherwise toxic cultures in their athletic programs. A baseball coach was fired for allegedly discouraging students from reporting injuries. A volleyball student’s sensible reticence to...

Joe Biden feigned shock when the Supreme Court ruled that he had no authority to wipe out tens of billions of dollars in student loans at the stroke of a pen. The issue is so clearcut, it’s hardly imaginable that we could need to explain it, but let’s begin with that part, to be thorough. Millions of people knowingly, willingly signed onto student loan debts, often while studying for degrees in fields that are well-known for producing relatively low-paying jobs. And then, when they found these burdens to be high after college, they hoped that politicians would let them off...

So the Supreme Court has ruled against Harvard and UNC, and in the process fatally wounded the “diversity” and “affirmative action” practices of most every higher education institution in America. There’s a lot to say about that, but I want to mark one important point: This ruling represents a drastic retreat in the social position of higher education. Though the ruling itself is not so much the cause as a symptom. Media accounts I’ve seen have tended to suggest that the Supreme Court had found that “diversity” is a compelling interest, sufficient to justify overriding the Constitution’s ban on racial...

Course instructor Jennifer Pollitt claimed the course will help fill in gaps in students' sexual education. Temple University in Pennsylvania has started its first "porn-studies course" this semester, aiming to teach students about sex outside of a moral, "right vs wrong" framework. Additionally, the new course, which has become popular at the school, will serve as a "jumping off point" to talk about woke issues like "race, ability, and the patriarchy," the Business Insider reported after talking to the course’s instructor, Professor Jennifer Pollitt. The Insider piece described the course, titled "Social Perspectives and Digital Pornography: The Other Sex Ed,"...

Earlier this week, the Florida legislature passed a bill that may become a model for the nation. House Bill 931, sponsored by State Representative Spencer Roach, requires universities to host public-policy debates and bans the use of political litmus tests in hiring and admissions. Both provisions address the increasing ideological homogeneity on college campuses. In the past three decades, university faculty and administrators have become overwhelmingly liberal. This orthodoxy of opinion is bad for academic research, student learning, and universities’ reputations in the eyes of the public. The bill is inspired by two pieces of model legislation. Its first part...

Governor DeSantis’ state continues to succeed in education The latest U.S. News & World Report concluded that Florida is the best state for higher education. The rankings look at “the share of citizens in each state holding college degrees, as well as college graduation rates, the cost of in-state tuition and fees, and the burden of debt that college graduates carry,” according to the publication. The publication also ranked Florida high in 2-year college graduation rate, 4-year college graduation rate and for its students graduating with minimal debt.

Kemp Mill Synagogue is a spiritual home to lobbyists, policy scholars, and White House staffers. It looks out over the opening of a lushly wooded forest valley in suburban Maryland, just down the street from a horse farm. One of its common nicknames used to be Congregation Bnei Ivy—the people of the Ivy League. The name alludes to an enduring way of life for an influential segment of American Jews. The eight Ivy League schools are a collective stand-in for the meritocratic system that turned the children and grandchildren of penniless Yiddish-speakers into some of the richest and most important...

The House Postsecondary Education and Workforce Subcommittee approved a proposed committee substitute for HB 999 Monday, replacing the language of the original bill. Republican lawmakers are proposing to expand legislation that would further limit majors and minors available to Florida university students. The legislation also would further undermine tenure protections for professors. The bill in question is HB 999 and it’s called Public Postsecondary Educational Institutions. Lawmakers will be discussing an updated version at a Monday committee meeting, where they will decide whether to accept or reject new expanded language in the bill. The American Association of University Professors said...

Matthew Salesses, an author and assistant professor of writing at Columbia University's School of the Arts, allegedly created the form as a "commitment to the process" and posted a picture of the paper to his Twitter account. "Made my grad students sign this today because if I'm going to commit to them, they need to commit to themselves," he reportedly said in a since-deleted tweet on Tuesday. The tweet also included a picture of the form, which began by notifying students that failure to uphold the contract would result in a failing grade for the course. The document first told...