Free Republic

Californians were right to decline to give affirmative action a second life. People are much better off without it. Saying 2020 is full of surprises is a gross understatement. One of the good surprises — in contrast to, say, the coronavirus reaction — in this election cycle is that voters in California, the bluest of the blue states, rejected Proposition 16, a measure that sought to restore affirmative action in the state, meaning “universities and government offices could factor in someone’s race, gender or ethnicity in making hiring, spending and admissions decisions.” Prop 16 was the left’s latest attempt to...

Some wonder why conservatives get the impression that many leftists are not patriotic. Well, how about their belief that the ideas of nationalism and patriotism are noxious? We told you! As you've probably heard by now, Associated Students of the University of California, Irvine voted to ban the American flag from an "inclusive" space on campus. Don't you just love loaded liberal words, such as "inclusive," which mean the opposite of what they imply? Is the American flag includable there? The language of the bill, passed by a vote of 6-4, with two abstentions (some real courage there), asserts that...

This story has a very troubling start, but a pretty satisfying conclusion -- if it really is the conclusion. Among the contemptible episodes of student/faculty heckler's vetoes at commencement ceremonies this year (Condoleezza Rice, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Christine Lagarde and others have been disinvited from leading universities following ignorant and aggressively intolerant protests), one of the most disturbing concerned the treatment of Robert Birgeneau by Haverford College. Birgeneau is the recently retired chancellor of the University of California, Berkeley. You don't get to be chancellor of Berkeley if you've got the political opinions of, say, Mitch McConnell, and Birgeneau is...

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano suddenly announced last week that she was resigning her position at the embattled agency in order to take a $750,000-a-year job as president of the University of California system. This will more than triple her salary, which was $200,000 at DHS. The timing of her resignation is highly unusual for a member of the president’s cabinet. Most cabinet members who leave after a president’s first term don’t wait an extra six months into the second term. Many believe she abruptly left DHS because of some sordid dealings that are about to be discovered. Her tenure...