Free Republic

[dc]O[/dc]n May 14, noted philanthropist and neurosurgeon Dr. Ben Carson is scheduled to give the commencement address at Emory University and receive an honorary degree. But there is a problem. In recent weeks Emory faculty and students have asked the University to disinvite Dr. Carson because he is a critic of evolutionary theory and advocate of creationism. Faculty and staff have written that Dr. Carson’s “great achievements in medicine allow him to be viewed as someone who ‘understands science’” poses a direct threat to science that “rests squarely on the shoulders of evolution.” The anti-Carson letter describes how there is...

A judge has acquitted a controversial pro-family activist from a July 2008 charge of trespassing at a Canadian university. William (Bill) Whatcott was arrested by campus security at the University of Calgary and put into a holding cell for distributing a pamphlet that addressed the “harmful consequences” of homosexuality. Whatcott, in an email to LifeSiteNews, called the ruling a “victory for all Canadians who value freedom of expression and religious liberty on our university campuses.” Judge J.D. Bascom ruled from the Provincial Court of Alberta on November 15th that the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms “applies” to the University...

A Fort Worth high school student was sent to the principal’s office earlier this week for telling another classmate he believes homosexuality is wrong. Fourteen-year-old Dakota Ary spent most of the day Tuesday serving an in-school suspension. It was punishment for discussion in his German class at Fort Worth’s Western Hills High School. “We were talking about religions in Germany. I said, ‘I’m a Christian. I think being a homosexual is wrong,’” he said. “It wasn’t directed to anyone except my friend who was sitting behind me. I guess [the teacher] heard me. He started yelling. He told me he...

Crossing Red Lines By Ari Bussel Those who serve in the military are owed a great debt of gratitude. In the United States, we are registered for selective service, but most of us have not experienced a draft. Military service in Israel is mandatory for every man and woman age 18. Men serve three years, women two unless they fulfill combat assignments that require three years as well. For those who become officers, an extra year is required. In addition to Jewish people, most Druze men and a small number of Bedouin men volunteer for service as well. However, from...

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- The U.S. Department of Education is investigating a faculty member's complaint that a series of pro-Palestinian events at a California university crossed the line into anti-Semitism and created a hostile environment for Jewish students. The department's Office for Civil Rights notified the University of California, Santa Cruz last week that it planned to look into allegations made by Hebrew lecturer Tammi Rossman-Benjamin dating back to 2001.

Study: Gay Parents More Likely to Have Gay Kids (Oct. 17) -- Walter Schumm knows what he's about to do is unpopular: publish a study arguing that gay parents are more likely to raise gay children than straight parents. But the Kansas State University family studies professor has a detailed analysis that past almost aggressively ideological researchers never had. When one such researcher, Paul Cameron, published a paper in 2006 arguing that children of gay parents were more likely to be gay themselves, the response from the academic press was virulent, to say nothing of the popular press; the Southern...

Left-wing radicals throughout history have at least one thing in common: They like to claim that their own freedom of speech is endangered while endangering the first amendment rights of others. For example, the screenwriters in Hollywood who claimed their constitutional rights were violated by the House UnAmerican Activities Committee in the 1940s with questions about their membership in the Communist Party did not talk about the anticommunist references they had been keeping out of films. They did their level best to keep anti-communists out of the industry itself but were never called on it either, even by allegedly red-baiting...

Radical Academic Credos Bethany Stotts, January 6, 2010 For supporters of David Horowitz’s student Academic Bill of Rights, academic freedom is about protecting vulnerable students from indoctrination at the hands of radical professors. However, one DePaul University professor recently argued that Horowitz’s conception of academic freedom promotes a “distinctly right-wing agenda” and “contains within it a backhanded insult to the intelligence of the students he is purporting to protect.” “If the professors listed in Horowitz’s The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America were as silly and irresponsible as Horowitz suggests, why would any student enroll in their courses?” asked Professor...

Supporters of Darwin’s theory continue to distinguish themselves on America’s college campuses—not for their reason and logic, but for their incredible ill manners and an almost pathological inability to engage in civil discussion. Last week, a factually-challenged attack on intelligent design was published in The Nevada Sagebrush, the student newspaper at the University of Nevada, Reno. Nothing new in that; I see ill-informed articles on intelligent design all the time. But after my colleague Rob Crowther posted a short comment suggesting that readers might actually want to hear from intelligent design proponents themselves (imagine that!), the Darwinist thought-police came out...

As soon as I began to speak, the anti-Horowitz demonstrations started. The second row of seats had been entirely occupied by members of ACT-UP the militant AIDS organization that had made headlines by bursting into a mass at New York’s St. Patrick’s Cathedral and throwing condoms on the altar. To my event they brought giant white signs with black lettering, which they now thrust into the air in response to each statement I made. This sea of signs served to block the podium I was speaking from, screaming in giant capital letters: “LIES!” “PIG!” “BIGOT!” As if this were not...

These events illustrate the strategy that has been adopted by opponents of academic freedom: Deny that a problem exists at all, and then discredit anyone who says that it does.-- "Intellectual Muggings"

As a freshman, I haven't been at UT-Martin for very long. But some problems are so obvious that they don't take very long to notice. In my studies I quickly realized that when it comes to the theory of evolution, Darwin is the only one who gets to answer questions-or ask them. I want to question this theory-to test it; check its credentials. And I want honest, thoughtful answers to my questions, not pre-formulated quips and deflections. But I have learned that if I'm not an evolutionist, my questions don't get credited, or even heard. When I ask why theories...

From The Recorder (Central Connecticut State University): On October 3, 2008, [John] Wahlberg and two other classmates prepared to give an oral presentation for a Communication 140 class that was required to discuss a “relevant issue in the media”. Wahlberg and his group chose to discuss school violence due to recent events such as the Virginia Tech shootings that occurred in 2007. Shortly after his professor, Paula Anderson, filed a complaint with the CCSU Police against her student. During the presentation Wahlberg made the point that if students were permitted to conceal carry guns on campus, the violence could have...

Up the Academy by: Malcolm A. Kline, October 31, 2008 In-house audits that Academia inflicts upon itself invariably give the Ivory Tower a clean bill of health but a recent study at least attempts to scratch beneath the surface. “Our analysis of 38 private colleges and 6,807 student respondents indicates that, consistent with a number of previous studies, faculty members are predominantly liberal and Democratic,” Mack D. Mariani and Gordon J. Hewitt write in the October 2008 issue of P. S.: Political Science and Politics, a monthly journal. “We find little evidence, however, that faculty ideology is associated with changes...

CSULB: Academic Senate distances itself from Kevin MacDonald's controversial works.LONG BEACH - The Cal State Long Beach Academic Senate has voted to disassociate itself from the writings of a controversial psychology professor who has been accused of having anti-Semitic and white ethnocentric views. "While the Academic Senate defends Dr. Kevin MacDonald's academic freedom and freedom of speech, as it does for all faculty, it firmly and unequivocally disassociates itself from the anti-Semitic and white ethnocentric views he has expressed," according to the resolution Thursday. Responding to the resolution, MacDonald, a tenured professor, said "everyone has ethnic interests." "This is an...

Ward Churchill is baaaaack! by: Deborah Lambert, June 05, 2008 Although Ward Churchill was finally fired by the University of Colorado, Boulder for plagiarism and dishonest scholarship rather than his 9-11 remarks, you'd never know it from his website at www.wardchurchill.net, aka the “Ward Churchill Solidarity Network,” dedicated to “Defending Academic Freedom and Political Dissent.” The site includes a petition to reinstate Ward Churchill, and a statement of support from Noam Chomsky....

Keith John Sampson never thought he could get in trouble for reading a book, especially not on a college campus. But that’s what happened. Sampson is a man in his early 50s. He does janitorial work for the campus facility services at IUPUI, where he’s been gradually accumulating credits for a degree in communications studies. He has 10 credit hours to go. .... The book is about how for two days in May 1924, a group of Notre Dame students got into a street fight with members of the Ku Klux Klan. The Klan was meeting in South Bend for...

Ford Foundation Underwrites Diversicrats by: Malcolm A. Kline, January 30, 2008 Believe it or not, a left-leaning foundation has taken notice of the risk to free speech on American college campuses. “Too often, academic freedom principles have been twisted to defend the freedom of students not to hear views that might cause offense, and the focus has become freedom from hearing rather than a freedom to express controversial perspectives,” the Ford Foundation’s Alison Bernstein said at Harvard last year. Unfortunately, the Foundation’s solution was to offer grants to the very people who make that twist—college administrators. “Of the 2,400 university...

VATICAN CITY — The pope's top aide said Wednesday that Benedict XVI's reason for canceling a visit to a Rome university was that he did not want to create a pretext for further "unpleasant" protests by professors and students opposed to the religious leader speaking at a secular campus. Anti-pope slogans have appeared on banners and posters around buildings at La Sapienza University, where Benedict was to have spoken on Thursday. A group of professors, mainly from the sciences, wrote to the university rector late last year to object to the pope's visit, depicting Benedict as a religious figure opposed...

Chicago, Ill- In arranging a series of panels on academic freedom in the classroom, the Modern Language Assocation (MLA) hosted a panel on French and Francophone studies, Chicano literature, and Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transsexual Queer (LGBTQ) issues to discuss barriers to academic freedom. Largely avoiding discussions of students’ academic freedom, the panel argues that, especially among politicized subjects, professors’ academic freedom is threatened by student evaluations, scarce tenure, and even their own professional code of ethics. Code of Ethics“Professional ethical standards, in other words, can be put into service when an institution deems fit to curtail academic freedom when it...

Deconstructing Universal (Conservative?) Values by: Bethany Stotts, January 03, 2008 Chicago, Illinois- In this uncertain time of global conflict, some professors believe it is time to teach students to reevaluate and deconstruct America’s real enemies—conservatives, science, democracy, and capitalism. “And so what we’re seeing in globalization is just an extension of our universality. And I would argue the three main modern forms of universality are science, democracy, and capitalism. So that’s one [type] of rhetoric that I think we have to unpack for our students,” said English Professor Robert Samuels at the annual Modern Language Association (MLA) Convention. In other...

Rebel Without A Clue by: Malcolm A. Kline, December 04, 2007 It always mystifies the education-for-social-change crowd that no one is quite as excited about their pet causes as they are. “While there is no inopportune time to teach protest art, the present moment, marked by a perpetual ‘war on terror’ and the contraction of civil liberties, dramatic and growing inequality, and a remarkably narrow mainstream political spectrum, offers an especially compelling context in which to explore with students the tradition of artworks that seek to challenge injustice, promote oppositional thinking, and spark counter-hegemonic political activism,” Joseph Entin writes in...

In a surprising act of corporate courage, the Middle East Studies Association (MESA) has dismissed an attempt by Philadelphia-based Campus Watch to place an ad in the program for MESA’s upcoming annual conference in Montreal. The text of the rejected ad read: Campus Watch: Working to Improve Middle East Studies since 2002. The bad news arrived in the form of a terse email from Amy W. Newhall, Ph.D., the executive director of MESA. She wrote from her office at the University of Arizona: MESA's advertising policy states, ‘MESA reserves the right to refuse ads it deems inappropriate or in conflict...

Hoffstra Law & Order by: Malcolm A. Kline, October 30, 2007 What do controversial mouthpiece-of-terrorist-suspects Lynne Stewart and the Law Students for Life have in common? Not much, it turns out, including the right to funding by Hoffstra University. The disbarred barrister was invited to give a lecture on legal ethics at Hoffstra Law paid for by the university. In stark contrast, the pro-life group on campus has yet to secure funds for a one-shot lecture by a speaker who shares the group’s anti-abortion views. “As a duly-recognized student organization, we submitted a budget application in accordance with the rules,...

Listeners must discern among the riffraff From the editors Issue date: 10/24/07 Section: Opinion Known for her mudslinging and immature name calling - she once called Al Gore a "total fag," like a bitter bully in the schoolyard - Ann Coulter comes to campus today as part of Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week, billed by its organizers as "the biggest conservative campus protest ever." The controversial pundit, whose fame derives almost solely from appearances on cable news networks and a handful of inane, weightless books - is - if not a welcome speaker on our campus, at least a reflection of...

Global warming lecture at CSUF stirs controversy Science weighs against philosophy on campus By: Sylvia Masuda Issue date: 10/18/07 Section: News Posted: 10/18/07 Controversy erupted in the Cal State Fullerton science community over Tuesday's global warming lecture in the Titan Theater. Research professor and climatologist Patrick Michaels presented "Reducing the Effects of Global Warming in Southern California," a presentation which explained why global warming is not an imminent problem. The Economics Association organized the event. Over the years, science organizations have criticized Michaels for exaggerating his credentials and for pushing what they feel is a political agenda. CSUF science...

he average taxpayer and parents who foot the bill know little about the rot on many college campuses. "Indoctrinate U" is a recently released documentary, written and directed by Evan Coyne Maloney, that captures the tip of a disgusting iceberg. The trailer for "Indoctrinate U" can be seen here. "Indoctrinate U" starts out with an interview of Professor David Clemens, at Monterey Peninsula College, who reads an administrative directive regarding new course proposals: "Include a description of how course topics are treated to develop a knowledge and understanding of race, class, and gender issues." Clemens is fighting the directive, which...

The President of Columbia University, Lee Bollinger, really gave it to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. He really did. He called Ahmadinejad a "petty and cruel dictator" and many other harsh names. All richly deserved. And it is likely that President Bollinger felt that he had done a good thing. In fact, however, as many of us predicted, it was Ahmadinejad who won. The very moment the Iranian Holocaust-denier was given a university platform, he won. Even the deserved insults gave Ahmadinejad a victory. Most people do not like their leaders publicly insulted abroad, even if they agree with most of...

Patriots need to learn to two words -- "treason" and "traitor." The American people need to hear the truth - that the left has gone far beyond dissent. It betrays America at every turn. Its hatred of our nation - our history and underlying ethos - is visible in word and deed. It slanders the republic, lies about our past, undercuts our warriors, revels in American deaths and consorts with the enemy in time of war (aid and comfort, and all that). These reflections are prompted by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's speech at Columbia University, in the course of his...

Isn't it always? But enough about Iran, let's talk about me! The same university that shouted down an American anti-illegal-immigration activist and the same university culture that just deemed former Harvard honcho Larry Summers too misogynist to be permitted on campus is now congratulating itself over its commitment to "academic freedom." True, renowned Stanford psychology professor Philip Zimbardo is not happy. "They can have any fascist they want there," said professor Zimbardo, "but this seems egregious." But, hey, don't worry: He was protesting not Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's presence at Columbia but Donald Rumsfeld's presence at the Hoover Institution.... Lots of prime...

That academic freedom comes with a caveat has perhaps never been so clear. Last week, University of California regents canceled a dinner speech by former Harvard University President Lawrence Summers. The speech was scrapped after more than 350 faculty members objected because of Summers' 2005 comments that women fall short in math and science, which he attributed to genetics. Even more vehement student protests greeted the decision by Columbia University to allow Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to speak on campus. Time and again, the uproar over controversial speakers and issues has illuminated deep philosophical differences over how free speech applies...

Columbia President Lee Bollinger said it was a question of and academic freedom, he was speaking of the invitation to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to speak at the University of Columbia. But how soon we forget [there are voices not welcome on the Columbia campus and free speech has been stifled there]

...The saga of controversial liberal law professor Erwin Chemerinsky's on-again, off-again deanship at the new UC Irvine law school was highly unusual in two ways. First, the pressure to enforce political orthodoxy at Chemerinsky's expense came from the right, not the left, and second, academic freedom and 1st Amendment values won a resounding victory when Chemerinsky was ultimately rehired ...The regents had invited Summers to be the keynote speaker at a dinner tonight in Sacramento. They then uninvited him last week after some UC faculty protested that "inviting a keynote speaker who has come to symbolize gender and racial prejudice...

"Reclaim Your Rights as a Liberal Educator." That's the title of a short essay in this month's Academe, organ of the American Association of University Professors. The phrase has all the imagination of a slogan unfurled at countless marches, but what it lacks in wit it makes up for in fortitude of the uniquely academic kind. Author Julie Kilmer, women's studies and religion professor at Olivet College, sounds the standard "they're-out-to-get-us" call and rallies her brethren to take back the classroom. We have, too, a vicious aggressor: conservative student groups that confront professors of perceived liberal bias, and they form...

EVANSTON, Illinois, August 22, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Academics and transsexual activists turned on a psychology professor after he published a highly controversial explanation that transsexual desires are eroticism based on the "idea of being a woman". In his book "The Man Who Would be Queen," Professor J. Michael Bailey of Northwestern University explained that a man's desire to be a woman is based on a sexual desire called "autogynephilia," which he describes as "sexual arousal at the idea of being a woman." He also explained that the term "women trapped in men's bodies" is a misleading way of explaining the...

Pro-Darwin Biology Professor Laments Academia's "Intolerance" and Supports Teaching Intelligent Design Charles Darwin famously said, "A fair result can be obtained only by fully balancing the facts and arguments on both sides of each question." According to a recent article by J. Scott Turner, a pro-Darwin biology professor at SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry in Syracuse, New York, modern Neo-Darwinists are failing to heed Darwin's advice. (We blogged about a similar article by Turner in The Chronicle of Higher Education in January, 2007.) Turner is up front with his skepticism of intelligent design (ID), which will hopefully allow...

Christine Brim just forwarded the following e-mail to me. If anyone has thoughts on this, please feel free to contact me at MLangbert@nyc.rr.com. WHAT IS MATF? The Muslim Accommodations Task Force is an initiative by theby MSA National to invite Muslim students, their colleagues, educators and administrators to discover how Muslim student leaders and colleges and universities have worked hand in hand to make campuses "Muslim-friendly." THE MISSION To help make campuses more "Muslim-friendly" by documenting existing religious accommodations and facilitating emerging ones. Over time, we will be able to rank colleges and universities on "Muslim-friendliness" and publicize our findings...

The president of the school's faculty association said 65 teachers and 190 other SIU employees are being scolded by state investigators for their performance on an online ethics training course required for all state workers. The problem wasn't their scores on the 10-question, multiple choice test. It was that they spent too little time reviewing the subject matter before taking the quiz, according to the Illinois Executive Inspector General's Office. "It's not humanly possible" that they read and comprehended the information in such a short amount of time, said Deputy Inspector General Gilbert Jimenez. He added that "we're wondering" if...

...HR64 is one of the most powerful university statements on academic freedom. It states: "The faculty member is entitled to freedom in the classroom in discussing his/her subject. The faculty member is, however, responsible for the maintenance of appropriate standards of scholarship and teaching ability. It is not the function of a faculty member in a democracy to indoctrinate his/her students with ready-made conclusions on controversial subjects. "The faculty member is expected to train students to think for themselves, and to provide them access to those materials which they need if they are to think intelligently. Hence, in giving instruction...

FIRE Press Release PHILADELPHIA, December 6, 2006—A report released today by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) reveals that burdensome restrictions on speech are commonplace at America’s colleges and universities. The report, entitled Spotlight on Speech Codes 2006: The State of Free Speech on Our Nation’s Campuses, surveyed more than 330 schools and found that an overwhelming majority of them explicitly prohibit speech that, outside the borders of campus, is protected by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

The snotty nosed miscreants at Ball State who attacked David Horowitz could use a little "Freeping" on their message board.

The London School of Economics is embroiled in a row over academic freedom after one of its lecturers published a paper alleging that African states were poor and suffered chronic ill-health because their populations were less intelligent than people in richer countries. Satoshi Kanazawa, an evolutionary psychologist, is now accused of reviving the politics of eugenics by publishing the research which concludes that low IQ levels, rather than poverty and disease, are the reason why life expectancy is low and infant mortality high. His paper, published in the British Journal of Health Psychology, compares IQ scores with indicators of ill...

Clemson Board Member Les McCraw of Greenville (“Tension Inevitable at Great Universities” August 30) is to be congratulated for entering the debate now raging over the freshman campus-wide reading, “Truth and Beauty.” The content of education is important and board members should be paying attention to it. McCraw’s approach to the controversy comes in the form of a response to Professor J. David Woodard’s article (Clemson reading assignment offers no moral standard, August 25). Alas, Mr. McCraw’s contribution to the debate does not do much to help us appreciate “Truth and Beauty” but only tells us why Woodard’s comments should...

Just over a week ago, Temple University’s Board of Trustees adopted a new policy on academic freedom, one that extended rights to students and not only to professors. The policy, which goes into effect today states in part that students “should be encouraged to develop the capacity for critical judgment and to engage in a sustained and independent search for the truth,” “should be free to take reasoned exception to the information or views offered in any course of study and to reserve judgment about matters of opinion,” and “should have protection through orderly grievance procedures against prejudiced or capricious...

Maybe one of the reasons that we have never-ending battles over academic freedom is that many academics seem to define it differently. “Academic freedom means that if I think that there may be an intellectual payoff to be had by turning an academic lens on material others consider trivial — golf tees, gourmet coffee, lingerie ads, convenience stores, street names, whatever — I should get a chance to try,” veteran professor Stanley Fish recently wrote in The New York Times. “If I manage to demonstrate to my peers and students that studying this material yields insights into matters of general...

You see, earlier this week I learned about a lovely new website. It’s called Teachers for a Democratic Society, and it’s dedicated to defending Ward Churchill. Churchill, if you don’t follow academic politics, is the University of Colorado ethnic studies professor who gained infamy last year for comparing the victims of 9/11 to Nazis. His university recently announced its intention to fire him, not because of his obnoxious views—to which he has a right—but rather because he, well, makes stuff up. Even worse, he makes stuff up to score political points.

(AgapePress) - A Canadian professor has been fined two weeks pay by a Nova Scotia university for telling a student that homosexuality is an unnatural lifestyle. But despite the disciplinary measures imposed against the educator, he says he refuses to succumb to the administration's "intimidation." Cape Breton University (CBU) fined veteran history professor David Mullan $2,100 in response to two human rights complaints filed by a homosexual student who coordinates the campus' Sexual Diversity Office. The student took umbrage at two letters the professor had written to his former Anglican bishop two years ago.

KEVIN BARRETT, a lecturer at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, has now taken his place alongside Ward Churchill of the University of Colorado as a college teacher whose views on 9/11 have led politicians and ordinary citizens to demand that he be fired. Mr. Barrett, who has a one-semester contract to teach a course titled “Islam: Religion and Culture,” acknowledged on a radio talk show that he has shared with students his strong conviction that the destruction of the World Trade Center was an inside job perpetrated by the American government. The predictable uproar ensued, and the equally predictable...

The American Association of University Professors is trying to spin the results of a poll it conducted to make it look like a ringing repudiation of the Academic Bill of Rights crafted by author and activist David Horowitz. “They do have an instinctive feel and sense that the kind of legislation that Horowitz is advancing is just not acceptable,” AAUP General Secretary Roger Bowen told the Chronicle of Higher Education. What the AAUP is trumpeting is the poll result that shows that about 80 percent of those questioned do not believe that “The government should control what gets taught in...

Last week marked the final set of hearings on academic freedom by members of the Pennsylvania state house. The Select Committee on Academic Freedom met at Harrisburg Area Community College (HACC) on May 31st and June 1st to hear administrators, union officials, professors and students. Dr. Peter H. Garland and Dr. James D. Moran came representing the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education (PASSHE) and said that it is their goal “to ensure that the more than 107,000 students attending the 14 PASSHE Universities receive the very best education possible” and said that each school already has policies in place...