Free Republic

Imagine dropping your child off in this man’s classroom, and there’s nothing you could say or do about it. Imagine walking into a supposedly professional environment and seeing a man dressed in women’s clothing and knowing this delusional weirdo is the person entrusted with teaching your child how to read and write. But it’s not just reading and writing and math. No, this is the kind of teacher who boasts about teaching your child “how to sissy that walk,” all while you’re paying taxes to fund this circus. Imagine your child, confused by their surroundings, asking questions about the rainbow...

Last year the Republican-controlled state government in Florida passed legislation requiring its public universities to do what are called “post-tenure reviews” on all their tenured professors every five years, as part of an effort to eliminate what Governor Ron DeSantis called “deadweight” and “unproductive tenured faculty.” The bill not only limited the ability of professors to protest termination decisions, it was also aimed at eliminating “diversity, equity, and inclusion” programs across the board. At the University of Florida the first round of tenure review has now produced some startling numbers, literally proving DeSantis’ claims. The report said that, out of...

Coastal Carolina University’s Justin Vaughn, associate professor of political science, and Brandon Rottinghaus, professor of political science at the University of Houston, have released a new poll through the Presidential Greatness Project. Vaughn and Rottinghaus, who are co-directors of the project, conducted the survey in 2015 and 2018 and are releasing new findings in their third survey on Feb. 19, President’s Day 2024. Results are based on nearly 200 responses from scholars across multiple academic disciplines whose work engages presidential politics. The survey shows that while presidential scholars continue to find Abraham Lincoln to be the nation’s greatest, Franklin Delano...

Every so often, one of our college leaders blurts out the truth about their feelings and beliefs. In their public pronouncements, they always try to appear reasonable, when they’re actually intolerant and belligerent. That’s exactly what happened at Bakersfield College (BC) in California. The story begins in 2021, when a group of faculty members at the school, disturbed at the inroads the DEI movement was making, formed the Renegade Institute for Liberty (RIL). Their purpose was “to promote diversity of thought and intellectual literacy through free and open discussion of American ideals including civil, economic, and religious freedom.” That amounted...

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...

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...

A Tennessee institution is taking a stand for inclusion by threatening to exclude those who don’t stand for inclusivity.So far as I can tell, contemporary adult society is mostly one big high school — coolness is king. And in some circles, at least, “diversity, equity, and inclusion” is all the rage.In corporate America and even the military, DEI has soared. And on college campuses nationwide, it’s taken colossal hold.Take, for example, the University of Tennessee, Knoxville’s latest turn.The College Fix has reportedly obtained 322 pages of new diversity guidelines for the roughly 30,000-student school, spanning 20 administrative and academic departments.Per...

A bill making its way through the South Carolina legislature may have a tremendous impact on the state’s public higher education system. And if successful, it may prove as a model for other states looking to get a handle on their hard-to-control higher education systems. House Bill 4522—the “Cancelling Professor Tenure Act”—will end tenure for newly hired professors at South Carolina’s ten public institutions of higher education, including such well-known schools as the University of South Carolina, Clemson, and The Citadel. Faculty who have already been granted tenure or who have already been hired with the expectation of receiving tenure...

In a recent article for the Martin Center, Duke professor Mike Munger asked an important question: should “a political board composed of nonacademics…be empowered to evaluate faculty proposals on hiring and curriculum in the first place?” He argued that, in practice, boards have already ceded that authority. For many years, shared governance, at least on the issue of hiring and tenure, has been reduced to faculty governance. Evidence of this is readily visible. During the recent controversy surrounding Nikole Hannah-Jones and the UNC Hussman School of Journalism, faculty voiced their belief in the faculty-dominance model. Deen Freelon, an associate professor...

The famous public intellectual Cornel West has dramatically quit his job at Harvard University following a tenure dispute, accusing the esteemed school of 'spiritual rot' and 'superficial diversity.' In a resignation letter he shared publicly on Monday night, 68-year-old West slammed Harvard's administration and revealed a litany of personal and professional complaints. 'How sad it is to see our beloved Harvard Divinity School in such decline and decay,' he wrote in the letter. 'The disarray of a scattered curriculum, the disenchantment of talented yet deferential faculty, and the disorientation of precious students loom large.'

Trustees of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have voted to grant tenure to New York Times writer and author of the divisive “1619 Project” Nikole Hannah-Jones, amid backlash over her “unfactual and biased” work. The board voted 9-4 in favor of granting tenure to Hannah-Jones after a lengthy closed-session meeting on Wednesday, according to a report by the Washington Post. The vote comes one day before Hannah-Jones had originally been set to start working as the Knight Chair in Race and Investigative Journalism at the University of North Carolina (UNC)’s Hussman School of Journalism and Media. The...

Professor David Decosimo is part of the theology department at Boston University. His online bio says the studies “theology, ethics, religion and politics, and philosophy and theory of religion.” Monday, Decosimo announced that it had been two years since he was granted tenure after what he described as 15 years of “exhausting” labor. He promised that to mark the occasion he would be offering some thoughts about what he learned. Two years ago this week I learned I had earned tenure. It was the culmination of an exhausting, incredibly demanding journey of over 15 years. I never would have finished...

The people of North Carolina dodged a bullet when the Trustees of the University of North Carolina acted to deny a grant of tenure to Nikole Hannah-Jones at the University's Hussman School of Journalism and Media, leaving in place a five-year contract to teach there that the school had offered to recruit her.The denial of tenure was first reported by NC Policy Watch:As Policy Watch reported last week, UNC-Chapel Hill's Hussman School of Journalism and Media pursued Hannah-Jones for its Knight Chair in Race and Investigative Journalism, a tenured professorship. But following political pressure from conservatives who object to her...

Nikole Hannah-Jones, the controversial founder of the 1619 Project, has lost her alma mater’s offer for tenure and is instead under consideration for a fixed five-year contract as a professor of practice. NC Policy Watch reported on the change Wednesday amid a wave of criticism of her work. According to the outlet, the University of North Carolina’s board of trustees decided not to approve Hannah-Jones’ tenure – which effectively translates into a career-long appointment – despite support from faculty. Susan King, dean of the UNC Hussman School of Journalism and Media, reportedly called the decision “disappointing” and said she was...

A professor at a New Jersey university is blaming President Trump and his supporters for the impact of the coronavirus outbreak, claiming it’s their fault African-Americans have been dying at a disproportionate rate. “F--- each and every Trump supporter. You absolutely did this. You are to blame,” was among the comments – several of them containing profanity -- posted on Twitter this week by Brittney Cooper, an associate professor in the Department of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies at Rutgers University. In another post, Cooper wrote that she and other African-Americans suspect that recent efforts to reopen the country following...

Last week, I received a phone call from a professor who teaches in another department here at the University of North Carolina – Wilmington (UNCW), where I have taught for the past 27 years. He was reporting a case of possible discrimination, which resulted in a professor being denied tenure thus losing his livelihood very soon. When I received the call, I immediately began asking questions to assess the validity of his concern. After just a few questions, I came across some information that will shock the conscience of any clear thinking, rational individual. By way of background information, professors...

It all started in June 2018, when Quillette published my article, “Why Women Don’t Code,” and things picked up steam when Jordan Peterson shared a link to the article on his Twitter account. A burst of outrage and press coverage followed which I discussed in a follow-up piece. The original article was one of the ten most read pieces published by Quillette in 2018, and continues to generate interest. A recent YouTube video about it has been viewed over 120,000 times, as of this writing: In his tweet promoting my article, Peterson took issue with one of my claims. I...

Students at my college demanded a review of my tenure because of an article I wrote. My fellow faculty members failed to back me up Sarah Lawrence College claims that its mission is to graduate students who are, ‘diverse in every definition of the word.’ Unfortunately, recent events which have been in the national eye, suggest otherwise. And this story involves me. Seizing on an op-ed I wrote for The New York Times a few months ago, in which I questioned the lack of ideological balance of the school’s extracurricular programming, a group of student protesters calling themselves the Diaspora...

Last October I wrote about the trio of academics, Helen Pluckrose, James A. Lindsay and Peter Boghossian, who submitted bogus papers to supposedly serious journals and discovered that a number of them were not only accepted but praised. Now one of the professors who engaged in that attempt to point out the deficiencies in contemporary scholarship fears he is in danger of losing his job. Peter Boghossian, an associate professor of philosophy at Portland State University, says the university is considering accusing him of “fabricating data” in the papers which were so obviously absurd they bordered on satire. From Fox...

The video posted this week opens with Jarrar commenting about the agriculture industry, which is vital to the Fresno area. “A lot of the farmers now are Trump supporters and just f---ing stupid,” she says, adding that she “can’t f---ing stand the white, hetero-patriarchy.” “A lot of the farmers now are Trump supporters and just f---ing stupid.” - Randa Jarrar, professor, Fresno State At another point, Jarrar talks about guns, and criticizes "the left" for being too "gentle" in dealing with "the other side." “I don’t give a f---. I’m buying guns. I’m an American, I’m buying guns,” Jarrar says....