Free Republic

You may have heard somewhere along the way that the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a leftist icon, was a critic of the Court's controversial 1973 Roe v. Wade decision. She was, without question, a strong opponent of legalized abortion -- but believed that Roe itself was "too sweeping and vulnerable to attacks," as a New York Times piece put it last year. More context:Ruth Bader Ginsburg wasn’t really fond of Roe v. Wade, the landmark Supreme Court decision that in 1973 established a constitutional right to abortion. She didn’t like how it was structured. The ruling, she...

It’s been a rough couple of weeks for students at Yale Law School, who are responding to news that the Supreme Court may overturn Roe v. Wade with calls to accost their conservative classmates through "unrelenting daily confrontation" and toss the Constitution by the wayside.Members of the law school’s conservative Federalist Society, first year law student Shyamala Ramakrishna said in an Instagram post, are "conspirators in the Christo-fascist political takeover we all seem to be posting frantically about." Why, she asked, are they still "coming to our parties" and "laughing in the library" without "unrelenting daily confrontation?"Instagram post by law...

The Yale University Art Gallery has finalized plans to return a sculpture of a Buddhist goddess to Nepal, the university said Friday. The return is the latest in a series of museum repatriations of Nepali artifacts. Yale acquired the artifact in 2015, though the donor has never been disclosed. The decision to bring the work back home to Nepal was a “collaborative one” done in tandem with the country’s government last year, the museum’s director, Stephanie Wiles, said. Bishnu Prasad Gautam, acting consul general for Nepal, said in a statement that the return “will help Nepal preserve its history and...

Yale Divinity School, located in New Haven, ConnecticutTwo centuries after its founding, Yale Divinity School marked its first-ever non-Christian service in honor of Earth Day. Around 80 students gathered on April 22 outside the university’s Marquand Chapel to mark the annual observance with singing and non-denominational prayers, according to The Yale Daily News. A student organizer told the independent student newspaper it was the first time a non-Christian service was held at the Yale Divinity School in its nearly 200-year history. Master of divinity student Tasha Brownfield led the event, which she described as “Indigenous- and Black ecology-based with a...

I’m a college professor, which is one of those jobs that people outside the profession love to ask you about. For the better part of a decade, most of those conversations have been about one thing: free speech. Are universities, once sites of pure, open intellectual discourse, no longer so pure? What is the future of this endeavor I’ve dedicated my life to, if my peers and I are afraid to speak our minds? In one way, this interest makes sense. An enormous amount of high-profile media coverage has been dedicated to what is said, or not said, on certain...

Open letter is the latest and loudest salvo against the Ivy League law school U.S. senators, governors from across the country, and other prominent figures have signed an open letter asking Yale Law School to discipline the "vitriolic mob" that derailed a bipartisan panel on free speech, the latest call for consequences amid the law school's inaction. The letter, sent to the Yale Law administration, included signatures from Sens. Ted Cruz and Mike Lee, nine members of the House of Representatives, and the governors of Tennessee, Oklahoma, Nebraska, Mississippi, and Idaho. It urges the school to punish the "physical intimidation...

The Yale Law School professor who attempted to keep order as protesters disrupted a panel on free speech urged her colleagues in a Thursday letter to recognize the disruption as a "blatant violation of Yale’s Free Expression policy," a statement that contradicts conclusions reached by the law school's dean. "This is an important moment," Professor Kate Stith said in a memo to all tenured faculty at the law school. "Any formal determination that the March protest at Yale Law School did not violate Yale’s policy on Free Expression would set a terrible precedent at Yale and elsewhere." The memo came...

More than 400 Yale Law School students — over 60 percent of the school’s student body — signed an open letter against free speech and a police presence on campus after hysterical woke students shouted down a bipartisan panel about civil liberties featuring the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF). Last month, nearly 120 woke Yale Law School students disrupted a bipartisan panel by trying to shout down and intimidate the speakers, who later had to be escorted out of the building by police. One of America’s best and brightest future Ivy League graduates screeched at the ADF representative: “I will literally...

Yale Law School Dean Heather Gerken says the recent disruption of a bipartisan panel about civil liberties by hysterical woke leftists — where one student screeched “I will literally fight you, bitch” — did not violate the school’s free speech policy. Earlier this month, nearly 120 woke Yale Law School students disrupted a bipartisan panel by trying to shout down and intimidate the speakers who later had to be escorted out of the building by police. One of America’s best and brightest future Ivy League graduates screeched at the conservative panelist: “I will literally fight you, bitch!” Dean Gerken said...

now-former finance director stole tablet computers and other equipment worth $40 million from the Yale University School of Medicine, and resold them for a profit.Jamie Petrone, 42, on Monday pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud and one count of filing a false tax return, crimes related to the theft of thousands of electronic devices from her former employer. As director of finance and administration in the Department of Emergency Medicine, Petrone, of Lithia Springs, Georgia, was able to purchase products for her organization without approval if the each order total was less than $10,000. She abused her position...

Former Yale Administrator Pleads Guilty To Embezzling $40 Million In Massive Fraud. A former Yale Medical School administrator has pleaded guilty to embezzling $40 million from the school in an electronics purchasing scheme. According to federal prosecutors, Jamie Petrone, 42, took advantage of her position as the director of finance for the emergency medicine department to authorize equipment purchases without additional approvals, which weren’t required as long as the amounts were below $10,000.. In total, prosecutors say she caused Yale $40,504,200 in losses – which she never declared as income on her ‘false’ tax returns for years 2013 through 2016....

A federal judge has encouraged all of his colleagues to "carefully consider" whether the Yale Law School students who attempted to shout down a bipartisan panel on free speech "should be disqualified from potential clerkships." D.C. Circuit judge Laurence Silberman sent an email on Thursday to all federal judges in the United States, urging them to take the fracas at the nation's top law school seriously. "The latest events at Yale Law School," Silberman wrote, "prompt me to suggest that students who are identified as those willing to disrupt any such panel discussion should be noted. All federal judges—and all...

A rare snake died while attempting to eat a giant centipede at a South Florida park, according to the FWC Fish and Wildlife Research Institute. Researchers said a hiker found the rare snake at John Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park. Pictures showed the snake dead with the rear portion of a centipede protruding from its mouth. “The state-threatened rim rock crowned snake lives in pine rockland and hammock habitats in eastern Miami-Dade County and the Keys,” FWC said in a Facebook post. Researchers said the snake usually grows between seven and nine inches long, but is rarely seen because it...

Among executives, board members, analysts and others in the business world in recent days, a “who’s who” list has been floating around, showing which companies have pulled out of Russia amid its attack on Ukraine — and which ones have stayed put. The spreadsheet, compiled by Yale University professor Jeffrey Sonnenfeld and his research team, has become a naughty-or-nice list of sorts, with CEOs trying their best to avoid being placed on the roster of “Companies That Remain in Russia With Significant Exposure.” Sonnenfeld, who founded the nonprofit Chief Executive Leadership Institute, said he has fielded calls from CEOs asking...

A star New Jersey high school athlete who went on to play football at Yale and Monmouth universities died on Friday after completing the grueling first phase of U.S. Navy SEAL training called “Hell Week,” the Navy announced. Seaman Kyle Mullen, 24, of Manalapan, died Friday evening at a hospital in Coronado, California, near San Diego. The cause of his death is under investigation, the Navy said. “We extend our deepest sympathies to Seaman Mullen’s family for their loss,” said Rear Admiral H.W. Howard III, commander, Naval Special Warfare Command. “We are extending every form of support we can to...

School issuing compliance warnings to anyone caught violating restrictions and reported to the authorities by fellow students.. Some students at Yale are warning that the litany of restrictions and rules, and the system the university has implemented to report anyone seen to be breaking them, has transformed the campus into a “surveillance state” policed by Stasi-like students who are annoyed at others violating the ever changing decrees. The Washington Free Beacon reports that complaints are being registered anonymously against anyone not wearing a mask, or indulging in “handshakes, hugs, and high-fives.” In one example cited in the report, one student...

Former Trump campaign advisor Roger Stone tore into Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) on Monday after an Axios report detailed former President Donald Trump’s frustrations with the governor. Axios reported Sunday night that Trump is “irked by DeSantis’ popularity and refusal to rule out running against him” in 2024. The report cited sources close to Trump, saying the former president has been “trashing Ron DeSantis in private as an ingrate with a ‘dull personality.’” Stone took the criticism a step further, writing on social media, “Trump sometimes President Donald Trump hits it right on the nose. Ron DeSantis Yale Harvard fat...

The Department of Justice has granted U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar an ethics waiver, permitting the former Harvard professor to support race-based admissions in a Supreme Court case involving Harvard University. Prelogar, who taught at Harvard Law School in the fall of 2020, was nominated for Solicitor General in August 2021 and confirmed by the Senate that October. Under the Biden Ethics Pledge, Prelogar was prohibited from working on a court case relating to her former employer until two years after her appointment. But the ethics waiver releases her to argue the case before the Supreme Court. Protect the People’s...

ale University’s spring semester will be starting on Jan. 25, which is a week later than originally scheduled. And, in addition to being required to be fully vaccinated, boosted and tested upon arrival, undergraduate students are now being told they cannot frequent New Haven's businesses the way they have in the past. While it’s only a temporary measure, businesses are expecting to be impacted, especially those who rely on dine-in and bar business. In an email to undergraduate students last week, under Phase 2 of the Arrival Quarantine, Yale students were instructed to avoid local businesses, including retail, restaurants, and...

It’s not just about Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson. The national soul-searching over whether to take down monuments to the Confederacy’s demigods has extended to other historical figures accused of wrongdoing, including Christopher Columbus (brutality toward Native Americans), the man for whom Boston’s Faneuil Hall is named (slave trader) and former Philadelphia Mayor Frank Rizzo (bigotry). Historians interviewed by The Associated Press offered varying thoughts about where exactly the line should be drawn in judging someone’s statue-worthiness, but they agreed on one thing: Scrapping a monument is not a decision that should be made in haste during political fervor....