Free Republic

Academic dishonesty and crime are alike: ... When my peers are found responsible for multiple instances of inadequate citation, they are often suspended for an academic year,” wrote the student who sits on Harvard’s honor council.. When the president of their university is found responsible for the same types of infractions, the fellows of the Corporation ‘unanimously stand in support of’ her ... Gay’s plagiarism, the Harvard Corp. showed that its commitment to academic integrity was as phony as its other ideals. ... serious academic-integrity offenses, are too often ignored or excused—much like petty crimes in cities with left-wing governments....

Whew, what a week it’s been for higher ed!The Claudine Gay debacle at Harvard has raised some fundamental questions about academia in general. She was president of the university, traditionally seen as the pinnacle of American academia.But a careful look at her extremely thin academic publishing record was packed with unattributed borrowings from other authors in her own field.Once all of this became public, and in light of her Congressional testimony in which she found a new love for the free speech that has been heretofore nearly banned at Harvard, it became impossible for her to continue as president and...

Academic malfeasance by Harvard's president deserves media coverage and condemnation, not excuses. ... Claudine Gay is the president of Harvard University. In recent weeks, she has come under fire for plagiarizing portions of her 1997 doctoral dissertation, as well as published articles she had authored in recent years. Examples of plagiarism were first identified by the conservative writer and activist Christopher Rufo, following Gay's much-derided congressional testimony regarding antisemitism on campus. Rufo has all but declared war on the Ivy League, which has prompted many academics to ignore his claims on grounds that he is acting in bad faith; Harvard...

[Author's note: a checklist for what all schools should offer, and thus a guide to identifying bad schools, which won't have any of the recommended items.] UNFORTUNATELY, SINCE THE TIME OF JOHN DEWEY, many schools have been obsessed with social engineering, and indifferent to what might be called intellectual engineering. This mistake in emphasis needs to be corrected. The goal of education is not indoctrination but to take each child as far as each child can go. Genuine education is the cement that holds the people in a society together, and connects past, present and future. ONLY WHEN CHILDREN acquire...

(The opinions expressed by contributors are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of RedState.com.)Stanford professor Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, co-author of the Great Barrington Declaration and self-described COVID lockdown skeptic, blasts the university in a powerful piece in Tablet that describes the administration’s attempts to censor and intimidate him for scientifically (and correctly) pointing out that mandatory lockdowns didn’t work. He was an early and influential voice in objecting to the harmful, draconian policies enforced on populations here and abroad, and he’s paid a heavy price for it.In his piece, titled “How Stanford Failed the Academic Freedom Test,”...

A startling admission that China is fighting a "biological war" with the U.S. comes from a video made by a top Chinese academic, trying to persuade the Chinese people that U.S.'s day is over, that our system is outmoded and unsuccessful, and that China is victorious.The professor who made the startling claim that China has won the "trade war, science & technology war and especially the biological war" looks like a heavy-duty insider who may well be part of the team that manages China's bid to displace the United States as the world's hegemon.His main argument is that the Western...

In the past, people displayed their membership of the upper class with their material accoutrements. But today, luxury goods are more affordable than before. And people are less likely to receive validation for the material items they display. This is a problem for the affluent, who still want to broadcast their high social position. But they have come up with a clever solution. The affluent have decoupled social status from goods, and re-attached it to beliefs. .... Thorstein Veblen’s famous “leisure class” has evolved into the “luxury belief class.” Veblen, an economist and sociologist, made his observations about social class...

Something was off about the memorial service for the anonymous anthropology professor who’d died of COVID-19. ... That made sense, in retrospect, because McLaughlin had fabricated her whole cloth. According to a report in The New York Times, since 2016, she’d been posting about sexual harassment in the science community using the Twitter handle @Sciencing_Bi, which she passed off as a Native American professor who’d “fled the south because of their oppression of queer folk.” McLaughlin is white. She constructed a person of color to guard herself against criticism from actual people of color, who were beginning to come forward...

Foreign policy expert Ian Bremmer, the president and founder of Eurasia Group and a New York University political science professor, got in big trouble Sunday for tweeting a fake quote attributed to President Trump, then claiming it was “plausible” the president would say it. “Kim Jong Un is smarter and would make a better President than Sleepy Joe Biden,” Bremmer wrote in the now-deleted tweet, attributing it to Trump. North Korea has labeled Biden a “fool of low IQ” and an “imbecile bereft of elementary quality as a human being” after the U.S. presidential hopeful recently called North Korean leader...

President Trump grew frustrated with lawmakers Thursday in the Oval Office when they floated restoring protections for immigrants from Haiti, El Salvador and African countries as part of a bipartisan immigration deal, according to two people briefed on the meeting. “Why are we having all these people from shithole countries come here?” Trump said, according to these people, referring to African countries and Haiti. He then suggested that the United States should instead bring more people from countries like Norway, whose prime minister he met yesterday. The comments left lawmakers taken aback, according to people familiar with their reactions. Sens....

Worried that “xenophobia and nationalism are on the rise,” organizers of a recent academic conference invited presenters to “decenter English as the de facto language” of academia. The Society for Social Studies of Science is particularly concerned that English is the official language of both the US and the UK, whose current policies they say "send a message of insulation and parochialism to the world." Worried that “xenophobia and nationalism are on the rise,” organizers of a recent academic conference invited presenters to “decenter English as the de facto language” of academia. Specifically, the Society for Social Studies of Science...

Philosopher AC Grayling explains why he won’t stop restating the arguments until the folly of Brexit is reversed There are five fundamental points that have to be repeated without cease until the folly of Brexit is reversed and the United Kingdom’s membership of the European Union is reaffirmed. Each one is obvious to Remainers, and has been clearly stated and restated already: but the point is to keep stating them all until everyone – but especially our Parliamentarians – is repeating them in their sleep. 1. Advisory referendum The referendum was not binding. It was held under the terms of...

Police discovered what Sarkar titled his "kill list" at his St. Paul apartment on Agate Street, which listed the names of two targeted professors, one of whom was not on the UCLA campus at the time of the shootings. A Brooklyn Park woman was also listed. Brooklyn Park police discovered her body in her home at 12:35 a.m. Thursday. Neighbors identified her as Hasti. • Sarkar's motive for killing the professor was believed to be over the perceived intellectual property theft. • Beck said the professors knew Sarkar had issues with them, but didn't believe he was a danger. •...

The two authors [Dylan Bennett of the University of Wisconsin-Waukesha and University of Washington Ph.D. candidate Hannah Walker] construct their argument calling Walker a racist by observing that the city of Milwaukee is home to the largest concentration of black people in Milwaukee. As in many metropolitan areas, many of the suburbs surrounding Milwaukee “such as Brookfield and Waukesha” are chockablock with white residents. Thus, the white scholars contend, any effort to reduce the scope of government is racist even if — especially if — proponents of limited government never use any overtly racist language. “Governor Walker engages a strong,...

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In the autumn of 2013 I was in my first term of school in a decade. I had two jobs; my husband, Tom, was working full-time; and we were raising our two small girls. It was the first time in years that we felt like maybe things were looking like they’d be OK for a while. After a gruelling shift at work, I was unwinding online when I saw a question from someone on a forum I frequented: Why do poor people do things that seem so self-destructive? I thought I could at least explain what I’d seen and how...

Larry Thornberry and I have both annoyed an Australian leftist academic with our respective commentary on the events in Ferguson. Binoy Kampmark, who teaches at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, wrote a piece "analyzing" conservative commentary in the wake of the grand jury's decision not to indict Darren Wilson. Kampmark has been associated with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and unsuccessfully ran for the Australian Senate under the Wikileaks Party banner. In addition to taking Larry and I to task, Kampmark also criticizes NRO's Rich Lowry and Ian Tuttle. Here is what Kampmark writes about Thornberry and me: [must read...

Pierre Ryckmans, writer and academic. Born 1935, died 2014 Nowadays Mao is generally regarded as a tyrant on a par with Hitler and Stalin — worse, by some measures, if “indirect deaths” (starvation due to his policies) are counted in the overall toll. Yet in the 1970s he was the darling of the European radical Left. Pierre Ryckmans was born in Brussels into a well-off, devout Roman Catholic family. One relative was a monsignor; another a governor of the Belgian Congo. He first visited China in 1955 as a student and subsequently worked in Taiwan, Singapore and Hong Kong before...

“Academia has been and remains a key target of foreign intelligence services, including the [Cuban intelligence service],” says an FBI report from Sept. 2nd.“One recruitment method used by the Cubans is to appeal to American leftists’ ideology. “For instance, someone who is allied with communist or leftist ideology may assist the [Cuban intelligence service] because of his/her personal beliefs.” Not that any of the above should come as earth-shaking news to anyone who:A: Attended a typical college and suffered through typical Liberal Arts courses. B. Knows anything at all about the history of Cuban spying in the U.S.Give the A.B....

In the fall of 2011, Breanne Fahs, an Arizona State University (ASU) Women’s and Gender Studies professor, taught a course called “Psychology of Gender.” As a part of the course, Fahs asked students to break into groups and engage in what she termed "menstrual activism." More specifically, students were asked to choose some aspect of cultural attitudes toward menstruation that they wanted to "improve." Before you continue reading this column, please know that I'm not making this up and I'm not hallucinating. I stopped dropping acid in the late 1980s. Some of you may be wondering what kinds of "cultural...