Free Republic

On Thursday’s broadcast of CNN’s “The Source,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) declared that it is “absolutely absurd” to accuse Harvard of fostering violence and antisemitism and also argued that the Trump administration “essentially, is using antisemitism as a pretext to crack down on Harvard’s academic independence and freedom” by barring the school from enrolling international students. Blumenthal said, “[W]hat they’re doing, essentially, is using antisemitism as a pretext to crack down on Harvard’s academic independence and freedom. And the secretary of Homeland Security said, very explicitly, this is a fair warning to all universities and colleges. It’s a fair warning...

Acting Columbia University President Claire Shipman on Wednesday bizarrely chose to stoke the flames by acknowledging arrested ex-grad student Mahmoud Khalil at the Ivy League school’s chaotic graduation. Hordes of graduating students in the riled-up audience began chanting Khalil’s name and nearly booed Shipman off the stage throughout her remarks at the embattled university’s commencement. “We firmly believe that our international students have the same rights to freedom of speech as everyone else, and they should not be targeted by the government for exercising their right,” Shipman told the crowd of nearly 37,000. “I know many in our community are...

Omar Sultan Haque has spent 23 years at Harvard University. He is furious about what has happened within the school. While the media have framed the recent fight between Harvard and President Donald Trump in partisan terms, Haque believes that the problem goes much deeper than political score-settling. As he rose through the ranks—from graduate student to postdoctoral fellow to medical researcher to faculty member at Harvard Medical School—Haque watched the university gradually abandon the pursuit of truth and replace it with left-wing racialism. Rather than stay silent, Haque has spoken out. Last year, he wrote an essay about his...

***On March 10, 2020, before any government prompting, Harvard declared that it would “suspend in-person classes and shift to online learning.” Across the country, universities, schools, and state governments followed Harvard’s lead.***Schools closed in many other countries, too, but under heavy international criticism, Sweden kept its schools and daycares open for its 1.8 million children, ages one to 15. Why? While anyone can get infected, we have known since early 2020 that more than a thousandfold difference in Covid mortality risk holds between the young and the old. ...What were the results during the spring of 2020? With schools open,...

The Internal Revenue Service is making plans to rescind the tax-exempt status of Harvard University, according to two sources familiar with the matter, which would be an extraordinary step of retaliation as the Trump administration seeks to turn up pressure on the university that has defied its demands to change its hiring and other practices. A final decision on rescinding the university’s tax exemption is expected soon, the sources said. The administration already has blocked more than $2 billion in funding from the nation’s oldest university, which is fighting the White House’s policy demands, citing the constitutional right of private...

High level excerpt:Antisemitism on campus lawsuitsBacklash against Harvard’s initial response to antisemitism accusations Former President Claudine Gay’s ‘unacceptable’ testimony to Congress Former president Claudine Gay accused of plagiarism Harvard refuses to comply with Trump administration’s demands

Trump administration announces freeze in $2.2 billion for Harvard after university rejected request for policy changes

Any good accountant knows that when the organization pushes back against an audit they are hiding something. (Leftist) Harvard University professors are suing to block the Trump administration’s review of nearly $9 billion in federal contracts and grants awarded to the Ivy League school. The review is part of the government’s crackdown on what it says is antisemitism on college campuses. Via Reuters.

For years, America’s left-wing elite universities have been hiding behind prestige and Ivy League branding while running full-blown discrimination campaigns against (mainly) white students, all in the name of politics. If you’re white (or Asian), you’re told to sit down, shut up, and take the back seat—because the progressive admissions and hiring playbook is all about race quotas, DEI scorecards, and left-wing identity politics. It’s not just unfair—it’s un-American. ... We’ve highlighted this from all angles at Revolver, exposing how universities use taxpayer dollars and their tax-exempt status to push a radical, anti-white, charity-driven agenda under the fake guise of...

The Trump administration said on Monday that it was reviewing roughly $9 billion in federal grants and contracts awarded to Harvard, accusing the school of allowing antisemitism to run unchecked on its campus. In a statement on Monday, the administration said it was examining about $256 million in contracts, as well as another $8.7 billion in what it described as “multiyear grant commitments.” “While Harvard’s recent actions to curb institutionalized antisemitism — though long overdue — are welcome, there is much more that the university must do to retain the privilege of receiving federal taxpayers’ hard-earned dollars,” Josh Gruenbaum, a...

Harvard undergraduate tuition will be free for students from families making $200,000 or less, starting next fall, the university announced Monday in its latest effort to provide an Ivy League education to those who might otherwise be priced out. Attending Harvard will be completely free for students from families making $100,000 or less, with the university committing to cover housing, health insurance and travel costs between campus and home. Undergraduate tuition at Harvard College was more than $56,000 this year, while total cost of attendance was almost $83,000, according to the institution’s financial aid website. (Harvard College is the undergraduate...

The Department of Education warned 60 colleges and universities Monday that they could be next to have federal funding taken away over antisemitic discrimination and harassment. Those named and shamed included six of the eight Ivy League institutions — Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Harvard, Princeton and Yale — and local schools Rutgers, Rutgers-Newark, Sarah Lawrence, three branches of the State University of New York, The New School and Wellesley. Monday’s announcement comes three days after the Trump administration’s federal antisemitism task force pulled back $400 million in grants and contracts from Columbia following monthslong Jew-hating demonstrations following the Oct. 7, 2023,...

Several women who were former college athletes filed a lawsuit Tuesday after being forced to compete against a man and share changing rooms and bathrooms with him in 2022. Grace Estabrook, Ellen Holmquist and Margot Kaczorowski all competed on the University of Pennsylvania’s (UPenn) swim team when transgender-identifying male athlete Lia Thomas was allowed to join the team and use the women’s facilities. The women are suing UPenn as well as Harvard University, the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) and the Ivy League Council of Presidents for allegedly violating Title IX by discriminating against women and causing them “emotional harm,”...

Three former members of the University of Pennsylvania swimming team have taken action to expunge the women's swimming records set by transgender former collegiate swimmer Lia Thomas. Grace Estabrook, Ellen Holmquist and Margot Kaczorowski, sued the university, Harvard University, the NCAA and the Ivy League Council of Presidents over their 'traumatizing' experience sharing a team with Thomas. They accuse the institutions of violating federal law by allowing Thomas to swim against women and share their locker room facilities during the 2021-22 season. Thomas is not listed as a defendant in the lawsuit, which was filed Tuesday - one day before...

Barely a day passes without colleges scolded in the headlines over admissions or athletics and endowments or education and expression. Schools have become scapegoats for both good and bad reasons. Prominent commentators and populist political leaders from both the far left and far right now target higher education as a common enemy. In fact the current fight over the meritocracy vs charges of elitism which would not characterize other fields such as sports or entertainment have torn open a seam on the right between Vivek Ramaswamy and Elon Musk in favor of selectivity and merit on one side and Laura...

Luigi Nicholas Mangione, the whiz kid Ivy League-educated high school valedictorian accused of the execution-style murder of the CEO of one of the nation's largest healthcare providers, may have spiraled out of control after traumatic back surgery. The procedure, which allegedly left Mangione in significant physical and emotional distress, may have contributed to his deteriorating mental state, a factor authorities are considering as part of their investigation. New York prosecutors have formally accused 26-year-old Mangione, a native of Towson, Maryland, of the fatal shooting of United Healthcare executive Brian Thompson. The incident occurred outside the New York Hilton in midtown...

While some schools across the nation hosted meagerly-attended “Transgivings” around Thanksgiving time, students at Hillsdale College wrote over 4,000 thank-you cards on the school’s annual “Day of Thanks.” Throughout the day on Nov. 21, participating Hillsdale students wrote the thousands of grateful notes to “donors, family members, professors, friends, and others who have supported them throughout their lives and in their college careers,” a school news release stated. Located in Michigan, Hillsdale has an undergraduate enrollment of a little over 1,500 students. The idea for Day of Thanks came from Hillsdale’s students, who “came up with it as part of...

Many supporters of Donald Trump will die sooner than the elites they hate, author David Brooks writes in his essay for The Atlantic — “How the Ivy League Broke America” — and it’s by design. “The diploma divide is driving American politics,” Brooks writes in a newsletter to promote his piece. “Donald Trump surged back into power with the support of millions of high-school-educated voters who are furious at the college-educated elite.” He adds: “High-school-educated people die eight years younger than college-educated people, on average.

Ivy League universities, particularly Harvard and Columbia, have faced a crisis since October 2023, when both institutions revealed themselves as places where blatant anti-Semitism openly flourishes. Amid the anti-Semitic uprisings on campus, the presidents of both schools also faced academic plagiarism charges. Alumni and donors, who expected more from the schools’ leaders and did not share the apparent tolerance for Jew-hatred, have stopped contributing financially. As reputational and financial damage mounted, Harvard President Claudine Gay resigned in disgrace last January, and Columbia President Minouche Shafik followed in August. But with those poison Ivies still trying to find a way to...

For many years, Republicans portrayed colleges as bastions of leftism, awash in bias against conservatives and impervious to change.With Donald J. Trump’s victory to a second presidential term and a Congress potentially under unified G.O.P. control, Republicans are now poised to escalate their efforts to root out what they see as progressive ideology in higher education.The return to power of Mr. Trump comes at a vulnerable moment for higher education. Universities have been under increasing pressure from lawmakers, while public confidence in colleges has fallen. Last year, two Ivy League presidents resigned following their widely panned performances before Congressional panels...