Free Republic

Jumping to conclusions is sometimes a big mistake. I recently became puzzled and mildly infuriated when I read that Stanford University was going to have a conference on freedom of expression and academic freedom—but was admitting only invitees, allowing no press or other interested persons to attend. That sounded like limiting expression and dissent to me. Then I read the news accounts further and realized that Stanford’s graduate business school was making a prudent decision. More specifically, the school’s Classical Liberal Initiative was inviting a blue-chip group of serious scholars, entrepreneurs, and free-speech activists for what looked like a stellar...

Kevin Moen has four grandchildren. That provides a passage-of-time perspective on The Play, the amazing, five-lateral Big Game kickoff return in 1982 that will mark its 40th anniversary on Sunday, one day after this year’s Cal-Stanford game. Moen was the Cal player who scored the touchdown on The Play, then slammed the ball into Stanford trombonist Gary Tyrrell, putting them both into Big Game history forever and beginning a life-long relationship between the two. “He was one of the guys at Stanford that kept a good perspective with what The Play was,” said Moen. “It wasn’t life or death. It...

Why? Because that's what the policy is! Nobody is allowed to ask why, not even Stanford faculty. The policy is: "Just shut up, do what you are told, and don't ask questions." That's how science works. ... My previous article on Stanford’s vaccination policy was incorrect. I was fooled because they issued very unclear guidance on Oct 17, 2022 which basically said they encourage people to take the shots. I clarified this with Lucia Sinatra of NoCollegeMandates: the primary series and a booster is required for Stanford students. Why? This makes no sense. Well, it’s the policy. And even Stanford...

Stanford administrators and the public safety department have been aware since at least December 2021 that William Curry, the Alabama local who was removed from campus Thursday, had pretended to be a Stanford student and lived in multiple University dorms, according to communications obtained by The Daily. The University kept silent about the security threat posed by Curry despite his removal multiple times from campus and a student’s police report of harassment. He continued to return, interacting again and again with residential staff who had not been made aware of the man posing as a student and living in dorms....

So the red wave ended up not happening, being something more of a pink puddle instead. Has America just become too gerrymandered and partisan for there to be “yuge” wave elections like there used to be? Perhaps. Maybe we need to also not run horrible candidates.Regardless, there are fortunately a few salty letfist tears to sip on after yesterday.Those would be the tears of one of the biggest Democrat donors, Sam Bankman-Fried. He ran a crypto company called FTX that was first valued in 2021 at $18 billion, then exploded upward to a whopping $40 billion, at which point Bankman-Fried...

Mind the Gap, the secretive group quietly reshaping big-money politics in Silicon Valley, is aiming to spend as much as $140 million to boost Democrats in the 2020 election ... one of the most powerful forces in Democratic politics. And the group is accomplishing this all behind the scenes — without any prior public scrutiny. This network of Silicon Valley donors raised $20 million for Democratic causes and congressional candidates in advance of the midterms. But the group has far greater ambitions in a presidential cycle: Mind the Gap told prospective donors last fall that it had already raised at...

"Oh yes. I know it's a fact because I've spoken to important people who are about to come out and whistleblow on it..." Are we alone in the universe? Is there life elsewhere? We don’t really have enough information at present to answer these questions, but we could be close to finding out. How? Thanks to a subject that was considered nothing more than a conspiracy a few years ago. The Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon has changed the way we think about life in the universe. All of a sudden, it seems very likely that we have been visited by beings,...

Rishi Sunak happens to be Hindu by faith, but this fact is unlikely to make him pro-India With Rishi Sunak becoming the third Prime Minister in two months, there are great expectations from him, especially because he has experience, as a former finance minister, to tackle the economic crisis that Britain faces. Just like his immediate predecessor, Liz Truss, he is a Thatcherite. “My values are Thatcherite. I believe in hard work, family and integrity. I am a Thatcherite, I am running as a Thatcherite and I will govern as a Thatcherite,” he wrote in a newspaper. But there is...

After taking the life of an elderly married man and dearly loved father, Jennifer Higgins Bradanini was supposed to go to jail for six months, complete 350 hours of community service, pay $183,857 in restitution, and be on probation for two years. Even though the initial sentence was considered lenient, and outraged the victim’s family, the sentence later was unexpectedly modified. The six-month jail time became home confinement with an electronic monitoring device. Shortly thereafter, Higgins was seen on social media dancing with an ankle bracelet on a rally stage in Los Angeles. In divorce court, a family law judge...

The federal government has been working with a group of four private companies to flag supposed election “misinformation” for censorship by social media platforms. Two recent reports, published on Friday and Saturday by Just the News, reveal the group was responsible for the censorship of 20 news outlets during the 2020 election. After Biden was in the White House, Just the News reported, the group was “rewarded” with millions of taxpayer dollars and its work continues today. Most of the targeted groups were right-leaning in their coverage. Those outlets include Just the News, the New York Post, The Epoch Times,...

Commentary: A research project to bring the Tasmanian tiger back from oblivion reignites debate about de-extinction. A preserved thylacine body lies curled up on a metal table. Two scientists in white lab coats handle the body. PIC at LINK (Getty) The preserved body of a thylacine being prepared for display in an Australian museum in 2005. When Hank Greely, a law professor at Stanford University, took to the stage at 2013's TEDx De-extinction conference in Washington, DC, he posed a simple question. "De-extinction," he started. "Hubris? Or hope?" The answer, he offered to a smattering of laughter, was "Yes." Greely's...

A massive UFO disclosure is about to happen as Stanford Professor Gary Nolan claims that the government has been covering up the suspected UFO visits and possession of technology that has been coming from another planet for decades. Dr. Nolan contacted important people in the government who have closely investigated UFOs and asserted that they are about to disclose some information. Dr. Nolan, an immunologist at Stanford has published over 300 research articles and is the holder of 40 US patents. Besides, he has been honored as one of the top 25 inventors at Stanford University. So, his involvement in...

A handful of colleges around the country are clinging to COVID-19-related protocols, including mask mandates for indoor areas and vaccine mandates for students and staff. Pandemic-related restrictions on some college campuses persist as most public health guidelines have relaxed and mask and vaccine mandates have receded from most areas of daily life. But in some cases, the mandates are going beyond COVID-19. At the University of California, Berkeley, students are mandated to get vaccinated against coronavirus, as well as the flu. The university's guidance says students who are not vaccinated against the flu will be required to wear a mask...

While in graduate school Matt Schwartz had an epiphany. At the time, he was learning about the food system as part of Stanford University’s Earth Program and also participating in an internship with food tech investor Dave Friedberg, and it was this combination of advanced education with a front-row seat to food tech innovation that helped him to see the future. “That’s when I came to believe that things were heading towards fresh,” Schwartz told me this week in a Zoom interview. “That we need to move towards a more nutrient-dense form of eating, a less calorie dense form of...

John Doerr, one of the most successful venture capitalists in the history of Silicon Valley, is giving $1.1 billion to Stanford University to fund a school focused on climate change and sustainability. The gift, which Doerr is making with his wife, Ann, is the largest ever to a university for the establishment of a new school, and is the second largest gift to an academic institution, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education. Only Michael Bloomberg’s 2018 donation of $1.8 billion to his alma mater, Johns Hopkins University, ranks higher. The gift establishes the Doerrs as leading funders of climate...

The best universities in the world are supposed to be bastions of scientific reasoning. Instead, during the pandemic, they instituted policies that are at odds with basic principles of public health. This includes, unfortunately, Stanford University, where I am an international graduate student in the PhD program in Physics. This spring, Stanford instituted a requirement that all students be vaccinated or else face an "enrollment hold" which restricts their ability to complete classes, progress on degrees, get financial aid or even live on campus. Though the university was not explicit, these restrictions on the unboosted amount to effective expulsion from...

Standard image sensors, like the billion or so already installed in practically every smartphone in use today, capture light intensity and color. Relying on common, off-the-shelf sensor technology – known as CMOS – these cameras have grown smaller and more powerful by the year and now offer tens-of-megapixels resolution. But they’ve still seen in only two dimensions, capturing images that are flat, like a drawing – until now. Researchers at Stanford University have created a new approach that allows standard image sensors to see light in three dimensions. That is, these common cameras could soon be used to measure the...

Katie Meyer, the goaltender for Stanford’s women’s soccer team, passed away in a campus residence, the school announced on Wednesday. “Katie was extraordinarily committed to everything and everyone in her world,” Stanford vice provost for student affairs Susie Brubaker-Cole and athletic director Bernard Muir said in a message to the campus community on the university’s communications site. “Her friends describe her as a larger-than-life team player in all her pursuits, from choosing an academic discipline she said ‘changed my perspective on the world and the very important challenges that we need to work together to overcome’ to the passion she...

Rowan W. Dorin, assistant professor of history, with the miscataloged parchments whose mystery he is working to solve. Credit: L.A. Cicero __________________________________________________________________________ When historian Rowan Dorin first stepped onto the Stanford campus in early 2017, he made it a habit to visit Green Library every week to dig through its collection of medieval documents and objects. After a few months, Dorin, an assistant professor of history specializing in medieval Europe, discovered something out of the ordinary. Three leaves of ancient parchment were labeled as a Hebrew translation of text about grammar, but its margins had Latin words like fish, capers...

Students shouting "Buzz off Bigot" and "We believe in science" greeted former Vice President Mike Pence as he arrived at Stanford University for an event called "How to Save America From the Woke Left." The second-in-command for the administration of former President Donald Trump took aim at high gas prices, vaccine mandates, cancel culture and "critical race theory" as he delivered his speech to a packed crowd at Stanford's Dinkelspiel Auditorium. Dozens of protesters gathered outside waving signs that read "resist fascism" and "your hate is not welcome," according to social media accounts. "We are the woke left!" protesters taunted...