Free Republic

In May, The Chronicle of Higher Education asked four academics from across the country to weigh in on the “adjunct crisis.” The results were predictable, with most of the blame directed at the usual suspects: bean-counting administrators, complacent, tenured faculty members, tight-fisted state legislators, and, of course, those evil Republicans. Solutions generally involved pressuring colleges and universities to fork over more money for tenure-track positions—irrespective of enrollment and at the expense of students and taxpayers. Here’s an idea that wasn’t considered: What if we awarded fewer PhDs? A scarcity of humanities PhDs, rather than a glut, would create more demand,...

he Left is abusing American high school education in its struggle to gain and retain political power. We only found out about this incident by accident. How many more? Shortly after President Trump’s inauguration, a group of public school history teachers in the posh Boston suburb of Newton pledged to reject the “call for objectivity” in the classroom, bully conservative students for their beliefs, and serve as “liberal propagandist[s]” for the cause of social justice. This informal pact was made in an exchange of emails among history teachers at Newton North High School, part of a very rich but academically...

An investigation by Arizona State University (ASU) in Tempe concluded this week that high-profile astrophysicist and atheist Lawrence Krauss violated the university’s sexual harassment policy by grabbing a woman’s breast at a conference in Australia in late 2016. (Krauss is a prominent member of the skeptics movement, which disputes the existence of a god or supernatural powers.)

something: the ideological contests are fading. What Irving Kristol famously said in his 2001 Bradley Lecture, “We in America fought a culture war, and we [conservatives] lost,” applies well to higher education. Conservatives fought wars over multiculturalism, Western Civilization, affirmative action, the Academic Bill of Rights, and political bias in hiring, and we lost every time. The educators have no reason to debate ideas, much less ideology. None of those old issues are up for discussion. (It should be said that Kristol noted that conservatives still had some influence in one theater of American life, religion, but that exemption is...

Sexual harassment’ is omitting a middle initial in an author list You don’t have to be accused of sexual assault to face a Kafkaesque proceeding at Cornell University that could deprive you the benefits of seven years’ hard work and money. Not dissuaded by a third of its law school faculty going to court to force Cornell to follow its own Title IX rules, the Ivy League institution is now withholding a Ph.D. from a student for the crime of allegedly defending his professor.

Hobart and William Smith Colleges is offering a course next year to teach students how “objectivity” and “meritocracy” function as “white mythologies.” “White Mythologies: Objectivity, Meritocracy, and Other Social Constructions” is a sophomore-level course taught by Kendralin Freeman and Jason Rodriguez, who are sociology and anthropology professors, respectively. "Students will explore how systematic logics that position ‘the West’ and ‘whiteness’ as the ideal manifest through such social constructions as objectivity, meritocracy, and race." “This course explores the history and ongoing manifestations of ‘white mythologies’—long-standing, often implicit views about the place of White, male, Euro-American subjects as the norm,” explains the...

I used to be a doubter who would cringe, just a little, at any mention of “the deep state.” I admit it, it all seemed a little far-fetched to me that there was this cabal of careerists conspiring from within the government to harm President Donald Trump when I first heard it. I never doubted there were individuals doing it, but a wide net of conspirators seemed like something out of a bad movie more than anything that could actually happen in the United States. I was wrong, very wrong, the deep state is real. But there is much more...

White racism must be everywhere for the Racism-Industrial-Complex to function George Yancy is a black professor of philosophy at Emory University whose research interests are almost entirely racially-oriented. Recently, he published an essay in The Chronicle of Higher Education entitled, “The Ugly Truth of Being a Black Professor in America.”  In response to “Dear White America,” an op-ed that Yancy had published in The New York Times and in which he implored whites—all whites—to accept that they are “racist,” Yancy claims in his most recent editorial to have been besieged by emails, letters, and phone messages filled with “racist hatred.” ...

In 2007, I sat down for a brief interview with an FBI agent. While we sat in a coffee shop in Wilmington, North Carolina, I outlined the case against Professor Julio Pino of Kent State University. My accusations were serious but irrefutable: Julio Pino was an Islamic jihadist who was actively conspiring with other terrorists seeking to murder American troops and innocent civilians. The FBI eventually got Pino. Unfortunately, it took them eleven years during which Ohio taxpayers were forced to pay the salary of a man who was openly planning to wage war on his own country.When Pino finally...

Siena College has dropped charges against a student who posted hundreds of flyers to raise awareness of the hostility conservatives face from professors. Zachary Butler, a junior studying political science, told Campus Reform last week that he posted roughly 600 flyers depicting an email exchange in which a Siena College professor called conservative students “miserable” to work with. As Campus Reform reported, Professor Jenn McErlean sent an email on March 20 announcing that she quit her school’s committee on civil discourse because the thought of working with conservative students was “making me miserable.” Though Butler was not involved in the...

To say that academic elites don’t like ordinary folks is to state the obvious. To them, Lanford, Illinois—the fictional, archetypal, working-class town, made famous by Roseanne and Dan Conner—is not to be listened to, but tamed.A well-functioning democracy depends on it.Taming Fishtown—Charles Murray’s version of Lanford—is the thread that seems to run through a new book, “The People vs. Democracy,” by one Yascha Mounk.You guessed it. Mr. Mounk is not an American from the prairies; he’s a German academic, ensconced at Harvard, and sitting in judgment of American and European populism.If only he were capable of advancing a decent argument.“The number...

A diagram, handed out in college course, labeling the president’s slogan, “Make American Great Again” as hate speech is at the center of controversy. It’s a picture that has ignited a slew of comments about college education in the area and the topic of hate speech but according to Rogue Community College, the diagram was taken out of context.

A recent academic journal article claims that "meritocratic ideology" and "depoliticized" classroom environments contribute to a sense of exclusion and isolation among female students. The professors argue that the emphasis on "meritocracy," "individualism," and "technical prowess" in engineering all contribute to a "masculine culture" that marginalizes women. Four professors are warning that the “hegemony of meritocratic ideology” and other manifestations of “masculine culture” in engineering courses are detrimental to women. Led by Carroll Serron, who teaches at the University of California-Irvine, the March 1 study contends that the sense of exclusion and isolation felt by female engineering students is exacerbated...

After the two-term presidency of Barack Obama - the first Black man to hold that office - was the election of Donald Trump a surprise? To many people, it was. The history of race in America is often told as a linear story of progress, beginning with the emancipation of slaves during the Civil War, continuing with the expansion of civil rights in the twentieth century, and culminating with the election (and re-election) of Obama. For people who believe in this story of consistent racial progress, Trump’s successful campaign, fueled as it was by white nationalist supporters, was very surprising....

Obviously travelling at warp speed isn't a natural state of existence for most terrestrial organisms, but we never knew just how harmful the effects of maximum warp velocities could be on human beings – until now. A new study published – yes, published – in an 'American' science journal (and accepted by three others) details how an experimental attempt to cross the transwarp barrier and achieve Warp 10 can have devastating and unforeseen consequences on human physiology. Wait… what?

And predictably put the blame somewhere else. "Also, the premium increases for health insurance they want from us will cost us about $600,000 every year," Martin Kich of Wright State University writes on the academe blog maintained by the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) in a broadside against his university's administration. "Right now, we pay about $1.8 million." "$600,000 more would be a 33% increase! On top of higher premiums, they want to cut health benefits via increased co-pays, increased out-of-pocket maximums, and increased coinsurance. Needless to say, cuts such as these harm people who are already sick, defeating...

“I’m not worried about a few dozen people with swastikas who want to replace the Jews, because they’re our past,” Dershowitz explained. “They have no resonance on university campuses today. “But the hard, hard left? Anti-Semitism, anti-Christianity, intolerance for speech. It’s the future. These are our leaders,” he lamented. “When I used to teach 150 students in my first year of criminal law, I’d look around and I’d say, ‘Future president. Future chief justice. Future editorial director of the New York Times. Future managing partner of Goldman Sachs. They’re our future. And that’s why we have to worry much more...

Two students at Columbia University are hosting a workshop later this month to encourage their peers to “redistribute our own wealth” to “marginalized people.” “Class Privilege and Radical Redistribution” is organized by Columbia University students Amy Wang and Claire Klinger, and will feature a roundtable discussion on “learning about our obligation to redistribute our own wealth.”

Kellogg Community College (KCC) has agreed to pay $55,000 to settle a lawsuit filed by two students who were arrested for handing out pocket Constitutions on campus. According to a press release from the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), which represented the students, KCC agreed to pay damages and attorneys’ fees, but will not admit to any wrongdoing. As Campus Reform reported just over one year ago, a KCC student and two other conservative activists were arrested by campus police after spending two to three hours recruiting for the school’s Young Americans for Liberty (YAL) chapter, during which they handed out...

The arrogance of this man. He even knows by his "dare I say" how inflammatory a statement he is about to make. http://www.lastampa.it/2018/01/29/vaticaninsider/eng/the-vatican/the-pope-asks-catholic-universities-for-a-cultural-revolution-Yktf3rHxCR10bKNrbj9uyH/pagina.html“on the cultural level of academic training and scientific study, a broad and generous effort at a radical paradigm shift, or rather – dare I say – at “a bold cultural revolution”.   http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/apost_constitutions/documents/papa-francesco_costituzione-ap_20171208_veritatis-gaudium.html Think that's it? Do you doubt the next requirement is for priests and bishops to sign-on and swear loyalty to the Magisterium of Francis? Since when is the teaching of the Roman Pontiff separate from the Magisterium of the Church? If the Roman Pontiff teaches...