Free Republic

New details are emerging about the Canadian tourist charged with abducting and raping an 80-year-old grandmother with Alzheimer's at a luxurious Bahamas resort. Gordon Wilkie, 61, of New Waterford, Nova Scotia, was arrested and charged with rape in the shocking incident on January 28 at the Warwick Hotel Paradise Island Bahamas. DailyMail.com can confirm that Wilkie is a faculty member at Novia Scotia Community College, where he specializes in renewable energy and has been placed on leave following his arrest.

The Center Square) - Erich Eischen is unique. According to Federal Election Commission data, he is the only person who lists his employer as a college or university in the United States who made a contribution of $1,000 or more to Donald Trump's presidential campaign so far in the 2024 election cycle. Such donors are a dime a dozen for President Joe Biden. There are 289, in fact, according to the FEC. Biden has more higher ed support at the University of California alone, than Trump has in the whole country. And Biden's support comes from schools that will tell...

Well, this is undoubtedly a net positive! Yesterday, The Daily Mail reported that the “sun is setting on liberal professors in the Sunshine State” as Ron DeSantis’s anti-woke initiatives in education have begun to take effect. From the article:The sun is setting on liberal professors in the Sunshine State as Ron DeSantis’s war on woke starts to bite, with some accusing the governor of ‘open hostility’ to higher education. Turnover has jumped by a quarter in the last two years at the University of Florida after a slew of new laws cracked down on diversity, trans rights and jobs for...

The defendants allegedly advertised online by offering nude Asian models for photography with rates ranging between $350 an hour and $600 an hour. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Three people were arrested for allegedly operating a "high-end brothel network" in Virginia and Massachusetts that catered to politicians, military officers and high tech and pharmaceutical executives, the Justice Department said. The defendants allegedly persuaded and enticed primarily Asian women to travel to Virginia and Massachusetts for prostitution, the U.S. Attorney's Office of Massachusetts said Wednesday. The defendants also allegedly rented high-end apartments to use as brothels, which cost as much as $3,664 a month, and...

The NYPD said it busted more than a dozen johns — including a CUNY Arabic professor — trying to hire prostitutes in Brooklyn, following a Post exposé on the open-air sex trade plaguing East New York. In the early morning hours on Aug. 18, cops cuffed and charged 10 pervy patrons looking for sex along Wortman and Alabama avenues as well as Malta Street in East New York, police said. A week later, seven more men were arrested during a second sting at the same location, cops said. Among those arrested was Brooklyn’s Chernor Barrie, 31, an adjunct lecturer of...

A California hospital executive and professor claimed children can identify as a mythology-inspired creature and claimed that this category of children love mermaids, according to a presentation reviewed by Fox News Digital. Diane Ehrensaft, a self-identified "feminist" who supports a "gender revolution," is the director of mental health and chief psychologist at the UCSF Benioff Children's Hospital gender development center. She is also a professor at UCSF School of Medicine. The developmental and clinical psychologist specializes in pediatric "gender-affirmative care for transgender and gender-expansive patients." Her biography paged reflected that Ehrensaft focuses her research on how genders before puberty develop...

resident Biden should find ways to defy the rulings of "MAGA justices" for their "gravely mistaken" constitutional interpretations, law professors urged in a letter on Wednesday. Harvard law professor Mark Tushnet and San Francisco State University political scientist Aaron Belkin penned "An Open Letter to the Biden Administration on Popular Constitutionalism" to respond to what Biden has called "not a normal court" following high-profile cases. "We urge resident Biden to restrain MAGA justices immediately by announcing that if and when they issue rulings that are based on gravely mistaken interpretations of the Constitution that undermine our most fundamental commitments, the...

Qualified Immunity is a controversial legal principle that “protects a government official from lawsuits alleging that the official violated a plaintiff’s rights, only allowing suits where officials violated a ‘clearly established’ statutory or constitutional right.” The bottom line for those of us who believe in civil liberties is that Qualified Immunity makes it very difficult to hold public officials accountable, especially police officers even in cases of horrific brutality, and it’s grating to think that this doctrine was invented by the Supreme Court in 1967. There’s a tension between the Bill of Rights, especially the Second Amendment, and Qualified Immunity....

The District Attorney’s Office in the Bronx has set a disposition date for Shellyne Rodriguez, a machete-wielding New York City professor who allegedly threatened to "chop up" a New York Post reporter, Fox News Digital has learned. A spokeswoman for the DA’s office said a status hearing was held Monday to confirm that the DA’s office was in compliance with all the discoveries and evidence in the case. The spokeswoman confirmed that everything was satisfactory and the date of Aug. 14, 2023, was set for a possible disposition. The court also extended the order of protection until at least that...

From today's unanimous Georgia Supreme Court decision in Knox v. State, written by Justice Ellington: Five University System of Georgia ("USG") professors filed suit to block a 2017 statutory amendment that removed public colleges and other public postsecondary educational institutions from the statutory definition of "school safety zone." Before the 2017 amendment, carrying or possessing a weapon on any real property or in any building owned by or leased to any postsecondary educational institution was a misdemeanor, and the 2017 amendment decriminalized that conduct. The professors alleged that, as a result of the 2017 amendment, the Code requires the Board...

Academic freedom has become a red herring to argue for the need for tenure. Here is why tenure is not serving the public good.Many states are considering legislation to end tenure. Texas is taking the lead on the issue, with Senate Bill 18, which has quickly become politicized. Both liberal and conservative faculty claim tenure is needed for protection from political agendas — academic freedom is at stake. A comparable critique of SB 18, by Adam Kolasinski, argues that Texas and other states’ “bills that weaken or abolish tenure protection … if passed, would undermine all reform efforts,” because then...

As the academy gets younger it grows more authoritarian, according to a new survey of over 1,400 faculty members conducted by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE). The free speech group's findings portend a dark future for higher education if this course isn't reversed—and if faculty minds don't become more open to dissenting viewpoints. Over the past decade or so, many academic departments embraced ideological views in their teaching and research, promoting social justice–laden scholarship as a way of correcting the wrongs of the past. Unsurprisingly, many departments developed left-of-center academic monocultures, becoming unfriendly to differing opinions. Young...

We have been discussing the virtual elimination of Republican and conservative scholars from many faculties despite the fact that roughly half of the country regularly votes for Republicans or conservative causes. Now a new survey by The College Fix of 65 departments in various states found that 33 do not have a single registered Republican. For these departments, the systemic elimination of Republican faculty has finally reached zero, but there is still little recognition of the crushing bias reflected in these numbers. Others, as discussed below, have defended the elimination of conservative or Republican faculty as entirely justified and commendable....

‘We can stand together for freedom!’More than 1,000 professors across the country have signed the “Stanford Academic Freedom Declaration” that calls on universities to restore free speech, academic freedom and institutional neutrality.The open letter calls on universities and professors to adopt and implement the “Chicago Trifecta” — the Chicago Principles on unilateral free speech, the Kalven report that requires institutional neutrality on political and social topics, and the Shils report, making “academic contribution the sole basis for hiring and promotion.”As of Thursday the letter had 1,095 signatures, and it increases daily.“The larger hope is to bring back academic freedom on...

The so-called revolutionaries who were busted for rioting at a New Afrikan Black Panther Party rally took a break from their yacht club lives and modeling careers to be a part of the mayhem. The seven “comrades” — including wealthy Upper East Sider Clara Kraebber — had their mugshots tweeted out by the NYPD early Wednesday, days after their arrests for smashing storefront windows in the Flatiron District. They were cuffed during a protest organized by the Panthers and the Revolutionary Abolitionist Movement groups condemning the death of Daniel Prude, who was killed while in custody of the Rochester Police...

I’m a college professor, which is one of those jobs that people outside the profession love to ask you about. For the better part of a decade, most of those conversations have been about one thing: free speech. Are universities, once sites of pure, open intellectual discourse, no longer so pure? What is the future of this endeavor I’ve dedicated my life to, if my peers and I are afraid to speak our minds? In one way, this interest makes sense. An enormous amount of high-profile media coverage has been dedicated to what is said, or not said, on certain...

We previously discussed the view of University of Rhode Island and Director of Graduate Studies of History Erik Loomis that “Science, statistics, and technology are all inherently racist.” Others have agreed with that view, including denouncing math as racist or a “tool of whiteness.” Now, as part of its “decolonization” efforts, Durham University is calling on professors in the math department to ask themselves if they’re citing work from “mostly white or male” mathematicians. According to the Telegraph and The College Fix a guide instructs faculty that “decolonising the mathematical curriculum means considering the cultural origins of the mathematical concepts,...

In response to Purdue University moving to an optional face mask policy, an English professor complained the move would give people “more freedom.” Purdue announced on February 16 that beginning last Friday, face masks in indoor settings would be optional “except for instructional, research and health care settings, as well as where contractually required.” The campus currently has a five percent COVID positivity rate, according to the statement. Professor Robert Marzec, whose specialization is contemporary British and postcolonial literature, didn’t think much of the announcement. “I’m curious what folks think about today’s announcement concerning masks on our campus,” Marzec wrote...

Two Rutgers University faculty groups have come out in support of “Professor Crunk,” aka Brittney Cooper, who said in a recent interview that “white people are committed to being villains” and as such “we gotta take these mf's out.” On Friday, the Rutgers branch of the American Association of University Professors said in a statement that after the interview Cooper had been subjected to a “renewed wave of racist attacks for her public scholarship.” “We wish to express our unequivocal solidarity with Dr. Cooper,” the statement reads. “[We] affirm our support of her academic freedom, and […] decry the harassment...

The attempted murder case against a Massachusetts college professor nears its end. Rie Hachiyanagi, 50, who taught art at Mt. Holyoke College, pleaded guilty on Friday to trying to kill a friend in a four-hour attack. “She expected to get away with murder — my murder,” survivor Lauret Savoy, herself a professor of geology and environmental studies at the school, said in her victim impact statement, according to The Greenfield Recorder. Assistant District Attorney Matthew Thomas told the court in Greenfield, Massachusetts, that Hachiyanagi arrived at Savoy’s home unannounced late Dec. 23, 2019 and hid until the geology professor realized...