Free Republic

WASHINGTON (AP) — The downfall of Harvard’s president has elevated the threat of unearthing plagiarism, a cardinal sin in academia, as a possible new weapon in conservative attacks on higher education. Claudine Gay’s resignation Tuesday followed weeks of mounting accusations that she lifted language from other scholars in her doctoral dissertation and journal articles. The allegations surfaced amid backlash over her congressional testimony about antisemitism on campus. The plagiarism allegations came not from her academic peers but her political foes, led by conservatives who sought to oust Gay and put her career under intense scrutiny in hopes of finding a...

Anti-Israel protests at American universities have made headlines in the aftermath of Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack. And almost simultaneously, many conservative critics — including GOP presidential candidates — have used those protests as an opportunity to ramp up their assault on higher education, eagerly yoking them to their long-standing accusations of “liberal indoctrination.” Eliminationist chants, partisan DEI officers, angry mobs hey-hey, ho-ho-ing their support for terrorists — in terms of Republican's favorite straw men, the “woke,” liberal campus of 2023 has them all! Institutions of higher education, conservatives charge, are complicit in fostering an atmosphere of intimidation and even violence...

Free walking tours are a common sight in San Francisco. Whether by Coit Tower, Union Square or Fisherman’s Wharf, the City by the Bay draws plenty of tourists angling for a firsthand look at San Francisco’s iconic views and landmarks. Later this month, however, a walking tour aims to bring attention to the “squalor” on San Francisco streets. Set to take place on Aug. 26, the tour plans to lead participants from City Hall to SoMa, the organizer, SF Anonymous Insider, said on Eventbrite. There is a charge of $30 for general admission to the tour. San Francisco Doom Loop...

EXCLUSIVE: Sam Brinton, the embattled non-binary former senior Department of Energy (DOE) official, was traveling on a taxpayer-funded business trip at the time of a high-profile baggage theft last year, internal Biden administration documents show. Brinton traveled in early July 2022 to the DOE-operated Nevada National Security Site near Las Vegas, according to internal Department of Energy (DOE) filings and expense reports obtained by watchdog group Functional Government Initiative (FGI) and shared with Fox News Digital. Brinton flew on a United Airlines flight from Washington, D.C., to Harry Reid International Airport in Las Vegas on July 6, 2022, the documents...

TOMSK, Russia – Every year, a small group of locals travels the 550 kilometers northwest from this Siberian city to Nazinsky Island, in the middle of the Ob River, to place a wreath at the foot of a wooden cross. It is a gesture of remembrance for the victims of the horrific events that unfolded there in the summer of 1933. "Every year in June, we place a wreath at the cross that was placed on the island in 1993," Valeria Shtatolkin told RFE/RL. "But this year, we couldn't go. The water was too high, and the island is almost...

Yet every day it seems we hear that neither politicians nor the public are paying sufficient heed to expertise. The claim has become a staple of scholarly assertion, media coverage, and political argument. Commentators raise alarm at our present “post-truth” condition,[2]made possible by rampant science illiteracy among the public, the rise of populist politics in many nations, and the proliferation of unverifiable information via the Internet and social media, exacerbated by mischievous actors such as Russia and the alt-right. This condition is said to result in a Balkanization of allegedly authoritative sources of information that in turn underlies distrust of...

Reaching out to Freepers asking for prayers for my brother A.K.A. popman. He fell down a flight of stairs last Friday and has been in a coma since with brain bleeds and pressure. He is intubated and has difficulty breathing without help and is nonresponsive. Doctors are hopeful time will help. Please keep him in your thoughts and prayers.

Baltimore is overrun by murders, rats, and rampant illiteracy. Then its art museum went woke. Like a medieval monastery after the fall of Rome, the Baltimore Museum of Art is a relic of another time filled with the relics of another era. The Baltimorean merchants, bankers, and railroad tycoons who decided a century ago that their city needed an art museum to boost its civic pride are long gone and Charm City’s favorite work of art is its mascot: a giant rat. Does a city where a third of the population is functionally illiterate need a large collection of French...

Our model is based on the fact that across history, what creates the risk of political instability is the behavior of elites, who all too often react to long-term increases in population by committing three cardinal sins. First, faced with a surge of labor that dampens growth in wages and productivity, elites seek to take a larger portion of economic gains for themselves, driving up inequality. Second, facing greater competition for elite wealth and status, they tighten up the path to mobility to favor themselves and their progeny. For example, in an increasingly meritocratic society, elites could keep places at...

How I Put Food on the Table I’d better start with the basics: I’m a politician. My job is to oversee public services like roads and police. You may think mine a mostly passive job—the humble public servant faithfully channeling the Will of the People and doing his best to effect it in a difficult political environment. But the truth is I’m an entrepreneur just like Zuckerberg. To advance my career I must find a problem people worry about—or can be persuaded to worry about—and then convince them I’m a better bet to solve it than the other candidate. I...

Democrats insist that Voter ID is voter suppression, not having a polling place every 4 feet is voter suppression, and black voter outreach? You betcha that's voter suppression. Yet some Democrats are concerned. While Trump is unlikely to receive substantial black support, they worry his outreach could dissuade African Americans from turning out in force for the Democratic candidate. For some Democrats, the prospect brings back nightmares of 2016, when Hillary Clinton failed to turn out voters in heavily black Detroit, paving the way for Trump’s upset victory in Michigan. “The end goal is to create doubt in the minds...

On Thanksgiving, radio stations around the country will play Arlo Guthrie's 1967 "Alice's Restaurant." But why is this 18-minute song about littering and Vietnam considered a Thanksgiving song? KUNC's Colorado Edition put that question to Margot, music host from our sister station 105.5 The Colorado Sound. Erin O'Toole: For those who aren't familiar with the song, could you describe it? Margot: "Alice's Restaurant" is based on a true story of something that happened to Arlo Guthrie and his friend Rick Robbins, who is also a musician. They were home for Thanksgiving, and they were hanging out with their friend Alice...

The first 10 changes to the Constitution were easy. Since then, it has been an uphill battle every time, and some of those battles are, at least technically, still undecided. We are speaking of the amendments to the U.S. Constitution, and those first 10 are, of course, better known as the Bill of Rights. They provide some of the most important guarantees of freedom associated with the U.S. Constitution — even though they were added years after the Constitution was first written in the summer of 1787. It wasn't that the framers of the Constitution didn't believe in freedom of...

I figure I should know what thee Activity Tab feature does now that I am approaching my 20th year. Any help is appreciated

Has the center-left ever been more apoplectic about a presidency? It can’t have been this nuts even during the Nixon presidency. Every day, their publications fill up with articles that are breathless to the point of hysteria about the disgrace that the Trump administration is bringing to the affairs of government. His incessant tweeting, his violations of protocol, his attacks on the press, and even the very existence of this administration has them in permanent meltdown. Here is an example. I’m leaving the over-the-top language from Charles Blow’s New York Times piece just to provide flavor: I feel as if...

From the very first day, Steve Bannon made an impression. In a Harvard Business School classroom of about 90 people in 1983, he took a seat in the “skydeck” — a spot at the top giving him a view of the entire class. The marketing professor pointed up at Bannon, calling on him — without warning — and asking that he present the case study they were supposed to have read before coming to class. The case was on Fieldcrest blankets, the acrylic bedding available at most department stores. “This,” Bannon began, “is a sleepy industry.” The tense classroom cracked...

IT HAS been a bloody year in Baltimore, Maryland’s largest city. On November 14th the police department reported the city’s 300th homicide in 2015, a total not seen since 1999. The surge in killings in the majority-black city of roughly 623,000 began after the death on April 19th of Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old black man who was fatally injured while in police custody. Since Mr Gray’s death the city has recorded 244 homicides, a 78% increase over the same period in 2014, representing more than 100 additional deaths (see chart). Criminologists and city officials disagree as to the causes. Some...

This afternoon Mrs. FZob was in a car accident that broke her pelvis and fractured a few vertebrae in her neck. She should recover fully. But we need a few days to know for sure. And we will have a pretty long recovery process. Please say a prayer for her speedy and full recovery. Thanks

In The Trial, written a century ago in 1914, Franz Kafka paints a portrait of an unimaginably oppressive government with secret laws and trials in which the individual is crushed. Today, in 2014, Kafka would not have to invent these circumstances. He could find them in real life, at the National Labor Relations Board. It’s up to the 114th Congress to keep the NLRB in check.On Friday, just before the holidays, NLRB General Counsel Richard Griffin announced that he had issued complaints against McDonald’s franchised restaurants and McDonald’s USA, the parent corporation, as joint employers.  Workers complained that they...

Happy National Read a Book Day! Celebrate with these essential sci-fi classics. Space, dystopian futures, robots, technology, aliens . . . what is there not to love about science fiction, a genre that stretches the imagination and offers a glimpse into what lies in a galaxy and time far, far away? Now that you've indulged on the most compelling, classic epic fantasy series, it's time to switch gears. Onward, futurists! We recruited our own POPSUGAR editors to help compile the ultimate list of geeky reads. And this week, we're showcasing the best sci-fi narratives, with all the traditional elements of...