Free Republic

Academic Bill of Rights Sweeps Georgia Senate, 41-5 By Sara Dogan Students for Academic Freedom March 24, 2004 Atlanta, GA – The Academic Bill of Rights Resolution, introduced by Senator Eric Johnson, sailed through the Georgia Senate today with a sweeping 41-5 vote. The resolution calls for colleges and universities to voluntarily end discrimination in hiring practices based on political or religious beliefs and to promote intellectual diversity and academic freedom on campus. Prior to the vote by the full senate, the bill was considered by the Senate Education Committee which approved the resolution on March 9 with a unanimous...

Legislators in the House of Representatives are currently considering an "Academic Bill of Rights" that would encourage universities to develop an environment of intellectual diversity by adopting ideologically neutral hiring practices and academic policies. The bill was introduced in Congress by Rep. Jack Kingston, R-Ga., and is supported by conservative lobbyist David Horowitz and his California-based Center for Study of Popular Culture. According to Horowitz, the bill was a response to trends of the last 30 years, in which liberal professors have increasingly outnumbered conservative ones in a more politicized university setting. "In the [university] typical faculty, Democrats outnumber Republicans...

March 18, 2004 The Reichstag gambit The twentieth century's vilest totalitarian regimes perfected several techniques for the control of civilian populations. Among these techniques is the commission of a horrible crime together with the attribution of responsibility for the crime to political enemies. Perhaps the most famous example of this technique is the incident involving the burning of the Reichstag in late February 1933. Hitler and the Nazis immediately accused the Communists of setting the fire. A great deal of evidence collected and analyzed by Walther Hoferand and others, however, points in the direction of the Nazis themselves. (See, e.g.,...

Defying voters, UC, Berkeley is admitting kids with low SAT scores and rejecting high achievers.When Governor Gray Davis appointed me to the Board of Regents of the University of California in 1999, I recognized the university's responsibility to extend the opportunity for academic achievement to as many capable students as the resources of the nation's premier public university allow. Sadly, today's UC admissions policies are victimizing students--not just those unfairly denied admission but also many with low college entrance exam scores who were admitted and can't compete. The California electorate voted to stop racial preference in college admission in 1996....

Richard Agans is not only more competent than your average bear, he’s more competent than your average Congresscritter, your average White House Press Corps member, and your average university professor. Who is Richard, I hear you cry? Why, he’s a Baggage Agent for Delta Airlines, that’s who. Allow me to illustrate my point. The members of my family, and occasionally me too, refer to me as “the Big Dummy.” Usually it’s meant in jest, but every joke must be rooted in truth or it doesn’t work. And I demonstrated the truth of this label Monday of last week in Washington-Reagan...

Admissions study finds racial discrepancies Differences not statistically significant, Brown says By BRYAN TSAO Associate News Editor The UC Eligibility and Admissions Study Group released a study on March 8 showing that slight racial discrepancies existed in the current freshman class. The group found that in 2003, blacks and Chicano/Latinos were admitted at a higher rate than predicted by a statistical model, while Asian Americans and whites were admitted at slightly lower rates. The study was designed to determine whether the University of California has been adhering to Proposition 209, which prohibited the university from considering race or ethnicity...

<p>The anonymous posters began to speckle the campus of St. Lawrence University in upstate New York last month. They carried an eye-grabbing message--"Republicans: The Other White Meat."</p> <p>Elizabeth Wardell, a senior, thought she knew who was responsible for their appearance: a certain assistant professor with the reputation of a provocateur. Surfing around her school's Web site, she landed on the sociology department's homepage and read a paragraph about Robert J. Torres. Then she clicked on his name and was transported to his personal blog. There, Ms. Wardell--who is president of the local College Republicans--discovered an entry headlined "Fascist, Racist College Republicans."</p>

NEWS ADVISORY For Immediate Release UT Student Groups Unite to Oppose Radical Diversity Initiative Students for American Values, College Republicans, Contumacy, Students for Academic Freedom, Students for a Colorblind America, Young Conservatives of Texas March 8, 2004 Media Contacts: Brian Bodine, Chairman, The College Republicans at Texas (512) 554-4583 briankbodine@yahoo.com Brendan Steinhauser, Media Director, Students for Academic Freedom-UT (512) 458-0252; bstein80@yahoo.com Clark Patterson, Chairman, Students for a Colorblind America (512) 784-0929; clarkryanpatterson@onebox.com (Austin, TX) - A coalition of student groups at the University of Texas at Austin have united to oppose the major proposals of the Report of the Task...

Defining diversity essential for setting requirements -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Daily Bruin sat down with Academic Senate officer Tom Minor and Sophia Kozak, the Undergraduate Student Association Council Academic Affairs Commissioner to talk about the progress of the campus diversity requirement. ••• Daily Bruin: What is the ultimate goal of the diversity requirement, and what will it do for students? Sophia Kozak: Teaching diversity at the university should be seen as an essential component of education, especially here at a public institution. I think UCLA in particular has tried many different avenues of doing so in the past. (But UCLA) hasn't...

On March 16th, 2004, the UNC-Wilmington Women’s Resource Center (WRC) will be hosting a speech by the Guerilla Girls. This group of anonymous feminists will be paid $6000 of public funds to dress up like apes, throw bananas at the audience, and campaign against George W. Bush. If you have never heard of them, you can log on to www.guerillagirls.com. There you can also learn more about their new book, “Bitches, Bimbos, and Ball-breakers.” This now marks the second consecutive year that the university has kicked off its so-called “Women’s History Month” (previously known as “March”) by spending taxpayer money...

The phrase “student activists” usually conjures up images of sign-waving protestors railing against various evils of the establishment. Indeed, for decades after the modern student movement began at the University of California-Berkeley in the 1960s, such protestors were traditionally liberal —and reflexively so, given that administrations were comparatively conservative. But now that today’s educational establishment is populated with yesterday’s student radicals, conservatives find themselves in the odd position of being the protestors. But rather than rely on disruptive tactics, modern conservatives are improving on plays from the liberal handbook: They’re making their points with wit and humor, not catcalling and...

SFSU sentence for Menaker doesn't sit well with some ALEZA GOLDSMITH Bulletin Staff The verdict is finally in. Tatiana Menaker must perform 40 hours of community service for a nonprofit community group with a charitable purpose after she made comments to pro-Palestinian demonstrators during a San Francisco State University rally in May. No specific nonprofits were suggested in the verdict. But she cannot volunteer with any organization that is solely identified with a community she most closely relates to: Russian emigres, the Jewish community or the state of Israel. "It's the epitome of hypocrisy," said Menaker's attorney Alexander Anolik. While...

In November of 2003, I got an unusual phone call from a fellow employee here at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington (UNCW). The employee had just attended a monthly staff meeting in another department. He claimed that during the meeting a high-ranking UNCW administrator had stated that recent increases in the number of student Christian organizations were causing "concern" for some members of the university administration. According to the employee, the administrator claimed that this increase in student Christian organizations began shortly after the terror attacks of September 11, 2001. The employee alleged that the administrator said...

Victory for Free Speech at William & Mary WILLIAMSBURG, VA— After pressure from and public exposure by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), the College of William & Mary (W&M) has reversed course and allowed an "affirmative action bake sale" to proceed without interference. A student group, the Sons of Liberty, saw its satirical protest unlawfully halted by W&M in November; it was one of many such protests nationwide that were shut down on campuses this past fall. While W&M allowed the group's bake sale to proceed without incident this time, W&M President Timothy J. Sullivan issued a...

A reflection while observing Martin Luther King Day: "I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character." These words, spoken by Martin Luther King, rang out across our nation all those years ago -- sparking the dawn of an era where the promise of equality among all American men and women could be embraced without fear of retribution -- truly a noble ideal from a peaceful visionary. But in the years since his tragic death,...

Two mild-mannered pro-family activists have been barred from an Illinois university campus after being railed against by homosexual students and faculty members who accused them of "hate speech."During their fourth visit to Northeastern Illinois University, Wayne Lela and John McCartney were subjected to the shouting and heckling of a large group of homosexual activists who ridiculed the two men for presenting factual information about the dangers of the homosexual lifestyle. One individual even tossed a package of condoms on their display table.Lela and McCartney are the founders of the Committee on Family and Social Health (CFSH). Lela says during the...

Mobile Register University accused of censorship 01/19/04 By SEAN REILLY Washington Bureau A conservative faculty organization at the University of Alabama is accusing administrators of censorship after the group was barred from using the campus mail system to distribute its newspaper without regular postage. Leaders of the organization, known as the Alabama Scholars Association, charge that the decision is payback for their efforts to shake up the status quo, including a proposal for term limits for university administrators and a report that found widespread grade inflation in some departments. "It's just an effort to quash any sort of dissent," the...

<p>A well-known conservative is reaching out to state lawmakers to beat back what he claims is rampant political bias against students and faculty who do not agree with a pervasive liberal orthodoxy in state schools across the country.</p> <p>As a result, leaders in several states are reportedly working on anti-bias legislation, including Colorado state Sen. John Andrews (search). Andrews told Foxnews.com that lawmakers in the state General Assembly plan to introduce a bill in coming weeks that would require state college and university officials to educate students and faculty better about their rights against political and ideological bias by other professors and administrators.</p>