Free Republic

Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Tex) took to the airwaves to warn that "randomly kidnapping folks and sending them to other countries could be considered an act of war. Let's look at it from the perspective of these other countries. How you you feel if hardened criminals like Tren de Aragua and MS-13 gang members were sent into your country? You'd be thinking 'what did we do to deserve this?' I wouldn't be surprised if the World Court issued an arrest warrant for Donald Trump for doing what he's doing." Acting Director of the US Immigration and Customs Tom Homan challenged what...

Columbia University President Minouche Shafik has resigned, according to the Washington Free Beacon. In a letter to the Columbia community, Shafik wrote that her tenure has been “a period of turmoil where it has been difficult to overcome divergent views across our community.” "This period has taken a considerable toll on my family, as it has for others in our community,” she added. In recent months, Shafik has come under fire for her handling of anti-Semitism on campus following Hamas’ barbaric attack on Israel that began last October. “I have tried to navigate a path that upholds academic principles and...

‘We expected Hamas to kill Jews. We didn’t expect Americans to celebrate it.’Someone asked me the other day how I planned to commemorate October 7. I found myself speechless, befuddled by the question. How do you offer an elegy when the war is not yet over—and 101 hostages, those still alive and the bodies of the murdered, are not yet home? How do you remember a catastrophe when it is still unfolding? How do you mark a past event that feels as though it was a prelude to a much deeper darkness, whose dimensions we are still discovering? How do...

DEI is ‘compatible with academic freedom,’ AAUP says.. American Association of University Professors condemns ‘attacks on DEI’ and defends ‘diversity goals’ in a new statement Diversity, equity, and inclusion statements and hiring practices at universities are “compatible with academic freedom,” the American Association of University Professors said in a statement Wednesday. “This committee rejects the notion that the use of DEI criteria for faculty evaluation is categorically incompatible with academic freedom,” the statement, drafted by the subcommittee of the Association’s Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure, reads. The left-leaning faculty union said DEI practices do not impose political or...

Columbia University’s new school year starts Sept. 3 — and some professors are already worried about another semester of chaotic protests, after activist groups have declared they “will be back.“ And with news on Wednesday that university president Minouche Shafik has stepped down to be replaced by interim president Katrina Armstrong, the next semester is even more uncertain. Last spring, raucous protesting, an illegal encampment and an occupation of Hamilton Hall sent classes remote and upended final exams and the main commencement. In a July statement, Minouche Shafik said the university is undertaking “community-building” efforts to quell the tensions —...

On Sunday, a group of keffiyeh-clad individuals huddled around a computer to discuss the "Palestinian resistance." Charlotte Kates, a member of the Israeli-designated terror group Samidoun, praised Hamas's Oct. 7 terror attack for showing "the potential of a future for Palestine liberated from Zionism." Khaled Barakat, a Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine activist, lauded airplane hijackings as "one of the most important tactics that the Palestinian resistance have engaged in." While those speakers and other attendees were explicit in their support for terrorism against Jews, the event did not take place in Gaza, Doha, or Tehran. It took...

Mohamed Abdou is a pro-Hamas “anarchist interdisciplinary activist-scholar of Indigenous, Black, critical race, and Islamic studies, as well as gender, sexuality, abolition, and decolonization” at Columbia University. Now, I don’t mean to pick on Abdou; it’s just that he happens to teach virtually every trendy pseudo-intellectual identitarian twaddle concocted by modern man. Ultimately, we make Abdou’s job possible. Nearly every student loan taken in the United States is either given by the government or fully guaranteed by taxpayers. This sounds wonderful in the abstract, since it allows every student a chance at higher education. The reality, however, is that we...

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....