Free Republic

Dozens of anti-Israel protesters were arrested at Emory University Thursday in a violent clash with cops, including at least one professor seen being wrestled to the ground and handcuffed in an online video.In the video, filmed by CNN but widely circulated on social media, chaos unfolds on the Atlanta campus as officers move in on the impromptu tent city erected by demonstrators early that morning.A chorus of screams goes up from the crowd as officers snatch demonstrators and place them under arrest.At one point a woman, identified by reports as Emory economics professor Caroline Fohlin, approaches one of the protesters...

The Nazi cheers of Sieg Heil didn’t start out in Munich, but in Massachusetts.The Nazi chant was borrowed from Harvard football cheers and imported to Germany by Ernst “Putzy” Hanfstaengl, a Harvard man in good standing who befriended Hitler and helped build a more respectable brand for the National Socialists.“Putzy” was one of a number of Ivy League elites who were enchanted by the Third Reich.Socialism forcefully implemented by great men, whether it was FDR, Mussolini, Stalin or Hitler, was the great obsession of America elites of the era who were convinced that it was the only answer to the...

As far as the student protesters at Columbia University and other universities are concerned, they’re making a strong and principled stand for justice. Yet events at Columbia and elsewhere have taken an ugly turn, with the protesters sounding more like the National Socialists (remember, that’s what “Nazi” means) of 1930s Germany than any actual crusader for human rights.When this latest social contagion has run its course and the hysteria has died down, these students would do well to consider carefully what they’re actually supporting. It’s clear that they haven’t done so as of yet.The New York Post on Thursday published...

If you are up on the latest trends in academia, you’ll know that “institutional neutrality” is in the news as more universities consider or adopt it. In my view, this is a good thing, as it maintains the role of the university as a neutral arena in which faculty and students can freely express and debate a wide range of viewpoints constructively rather than feel stifled when their university takes a public stance on a political or social issue. However, there is confusion within academia on what institutional neutrality means and how to implement it. The free-speech organization FIRE (Foundation...

This is all Obama. What you see happening right now in New York City. It all started at Columbia University way back in the early 1980’s. Obama was my Columbia U classmate. And now it’s all full circle back to our roots (excuse the pun). Columbia University is the canary in the coal mine. George HW Bush talked about “1,000 points of light.” Obama uses “1,000 points of destruction” to achieve his goal- the intentional destruction of America. You can see it all happening just blocks apart right now – all built around Columbia University and NYC. Upper Manhattan is...

FBI Director Christopher Wray on April 18 warned national security and intelligence experts, as well as students, that risks the government of China poses to U.S. national and economic security are “upon us now”—and that U.S. critical infrastructure is a prime target. “The PRC [People’s Republic of China] has made it clear that it considers every sector that makes our society run as fair game in its bid to dominate on the world stage, and that its plan is to land low blows against civilian infrastructure to try to induce panic and break America’s will to resist,” he said in...

Activists from the Im Tirtzu movement filed a complaint with the police on Wednesday against Dr. Anat Matar, after she praised convicted terrorist Walid Daka, who died in prison on Sunday. Daka, a convicted terrorist, was imprisoned following his role in the kidnap, torture, mutilation, and subsequent murder of IDF soldier Moshe Tamam in 1986. In May of 2023, there was a renewed attempt to have Daka released from prison as he was ill with terminal brain cancer, but the motion did not pass and he was not released. Dr. Matar, a professor of philosophy at Tel Aviv University, eulogized...

A woke professor at Baylor University has come under fire for blasting acclaimed Harry Potter author J.K. Rowing for her opposition to normalizing the transgender movement, calling her out for her apparent ‘hatred of trans-people.’ While this is deeply troubling, it is hardly the worst thing about him. Founded in 1845 and claiming 16,000 students, Baylor University is the world’s largest Baptist University and one of the oldest. Like many once-faithful institutions that have gone before her, however, Baylor is deeply compromised and is inexorably on the downgrade. Not only have they hosted Beth Moore and Jemar Tisby for a...

Students at Vanderbilt University are facing expulsion and suspensions after a protest outside of an administration building in March turned chaotic and led to arrests. A university spokeswoman said Vanderbilt couldn’t share how many students are facing expulsion or suspension related to the incident at Kirkland Hall, where students pushed past a community service officer to enter the administration building as part of a sit-in protest. But in an update to students and staff on Friday, Provost and Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs C. Cybele Raver said after a thorough review of the incident, including examination of evidence and interviews...

Okay, to be fair, “beware” kind of applies to all of academia at this point, but I think this one is worth mentioning, and I happened upon it by chance:‘New’ refers to the improbability of any one discipline or mode of thinking (e.g. Marxism, postmodernism) producing similar results, and that ‘no one (other than the interdisciplinarian) takes responsibility for studying the complex problem, object, text, or system that falls between the disciplines or that transcends them’ (Repko & Szostak, 2016, p. 324).This passage comes from a 2020 college textbook, the Third Edition of Introduction to Interdisciplinary Studies by Allen F....

Mohamed Abdou is an “Islamic scholar” who is lost in admiration for Hamas, and how it managed to launch its “stealth” attack on October 7. What most of the world sees as unspeakable atrocities, with Hamas operatives beheading babies, burning children alive, raping, torturing, mutilating, and murdering Israeli girls, cutting the breasts off women and using them to play catch, cutting off the genitalia and gouging out the eyes of men, murdering children in front of their parents and parents in front of their children, Mohamed Abdou sees as glorious deeds of derring-do, by a greatly outnumbered force of brave...

During the last dozen years or so, one of the more common higher-education stories has been a college or university rushing to judgment against a male student or faculty member over an allegation of misconduct with a female. The Obama education department encouraged schools to “get tough” by employing procedures that were grossly unfair to the accused individuals, usually resulting in their suspension or expulsion. Subsequently, many lawsuits were filed against colleges for having violated the rights of those who were disciplined. In most instances, the school lost, with the judges frequently denouncing the “kangaroo court” nature of the proceedings...

Mike Dumont guided his blue Porsche Cayenne down Maritime Academy Drive in late February, the last glimmers of sunlight shooting across the California State University system’s smallest campus. Eight months earlier, when Dumont took over as Cal Maritime Academy’s interim president, he’d known he faced a difficult assignment: Diversify and grow what has been a homogeneous student body. But now, as he drove through the Vallejo campus, he understood the full extent of his challenges.

After decades of the academy’s never-ending stream of new jargon, one can’t be blamed for ignoring another entry. But as with all the others, what begins as a crackpot idea quickly finds its way into university rules and regulations. That’s what’s happening with “cultural taxation.” For a few years now, individual campuses of California State University have been considering turning what seemed like just another grievance into an opportunity to promote a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) agenda. A typical university policy statement (such as this one from California State University, Fullerton) reads, “Faculty members from traditionally underrepresented groups may...

Alade McKen plagiarized pages of material from Wikipedia.. The chief diversity, equity, and inclusion officer of Columbia University's medical school, Alade McKen, plagiarized extensively in his doctoral dissertation, lifting entire pages of material, without attribution, from sources that include Wikipedia, according to a complaint submitted to the university on Wednesday. The allegations implicate approximately a fifth of McKen's 163-page dissertation, "'UBUNTU' I am because we are: A case study examining the experiences of an African-centered Rites of Passage program within a community-based organization," submitted to Iowa State University's School of Education in 2021. More than two of those pages are...

The University of North Carolina system oversees 16 state universities. Campus locations include Chapel Hill, Wilmington, Charlotte, Asheville, and Greensboro. UNC-Chapel Hill, originally called the University of North Carolina, was founded in 1789 and is one of the oldest public universities in the United States. According to Wikipedia statistics, some 245,000 students attended UNC system universities in 2021. One of the schools in the UNC system, UNC-Greensboro, is in the news these days because of a decision by Chancellor Franklin D. Gilliam Jr. to cut undergraduate and/or graduate programs in physics, mathematics, computer science, anthropology and nursing, citing “university direction,...

Interim Harvard President Alan M. Garber ’76 is expected to announce a working group that will consider a policy of institutional neutrality, a move that comes just months after the University became embroiled in controversy over its response to Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel.A formal stance of neutrality, in which Harvard would refrain from making political statements as an institution, would be a marked shift from the University’s current approach to politics. It would also, in theory, help the University avoid the pressure it’s faced in the past to take political positions on contentious issues — such as the...

The rise of political orthodoxy on campus is often cited as one of the key reasons for reforming universities. But if there is a rise of orthodoxy, what does this orthodoxy look like, who is perpetuating it, and on what grounds are they doing so? Professors might immediately want me to point out that universities are known for being open environments of intellectual, academic, and expressive freedom, which support their core mission to create and disseminate knowledge. They might also wish to take issue with the idea that faculty members push an orthodoxy, as it’s common for students (or students’...

Pro-life researchers whose studies related to abortion were pulled by Sage Journals on account of alleged failures to disclose "conflicts of interest" have announced that they are taking legal action. Lead researcher and Charlotte Lozier Institute Vice President James Studnicki accused the publication of employing "blatant double standards," pointing out that while it went after him and his team for their not going far enough in divulging their ties to pro-life organizations, it has not employed the same level of scrutiny to abortion-related researchers linked to pro-choice groups. In a statement to The College Fix, the Charlotte Lozier Institute confirmed...

Sidney Chalhoub pledged to support 'Palestinian liberation' as part of Harvard Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine ... The chairman of Harvard University's history department is a member of a faculty group, Harvard Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine, that posted an anti-Semitic cartoon over the holiday weekend depicting a hand emblazoned with the Star of David holding a noose around the necks of one black man and one Arab man. In the background, a black arm swings a machete scrawled with the phrase, "liberation movement." The image was posted alongside a message from the faculty group arguing...