Free Republic

Officials at Cambridge Public Schools are distancing the district from a letter penned by a school librarian rejecting books donated by first lady Melania Trump. In the blog post, published Tuesday on the Horn Book, Liz Phipps Soeiro, a library media specialist at the district’s Cambridgeport School, began by thanking the first lady for the 10 Dr. Seuss books sent to her school “for its high standards of excellence.” But she went on to explain why they would not be keeping the gifted titles. “Cities like Philadelphia, Chicago, and Detroit are suffering through expansion, privatization, and school ‘choice’ with no...

Protests broke out at U.C. Berkeley Tuesday to shut down Patriot Prayers’ free speech rally, landing at least three protesters in jail, among them prominent “By Any Means Necessary” (BAMN) leader Yvonne Felarca. Felarca, 47, is a teacher at Martin Luther King, Jr. Middle School and was arrested for battery and resisting arrest after the Antifa-BAMN “Victory March” celebrating Berkeley’s cancellation of “Free Speech Week.”

A Cambridge Public Schools librarian has explained why her class won't be keeping a donation of books donated by First Lady Melania Trump. In an open letter on the book review site, Horn Book, elementary school librarian Liz Phipps Soeiro explained that her school already has thousands of books and postured that there were schools in greater need of the donation. She also took the opportunity to criticize the policies of Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos. Soeiro criticized the choice of donated books as well. "So, my school doesn’t have a NEED for these books. And then there’s the matter...

Northern Michigan University is offering students the chance to major in a new program called medicinal plant chemistry — marijuana analysis, basically. The program is the first of its kind at a four-year university in the U.S., according to CBS Detroit. Students will take classes in chemistry, plant biology and business entrepreneurship, and the program will also feature a capstone “research experience” involving “experimental horticulture and instrumental analysis of natural products.” As far as hands-on experience? “We’re not going to be actually growing anything on campus,” said Brandon Canfield, associate chemistry professor at Northern Michigan University, to CBS Detroit. “Maybe...

The anonymous tip came in at 10:30 p.m. on Thursday, April 6. There it sat for almost 24 hours, until Rob Shimshock, a 22-year-old reporter for the Daily Caller in Washington, found it in the site’s generic inbox, an electronic slush pile. The unsigned email contained links to a few tweets, as well as to the biographical page of an untenured history lecturer at California State University, Fresno—Lars Maischak. The author was obscure, but the tweets were explosive. On February 17, Maischak had posted on Twitter about the new president: “To save American democracy, Trump must hang. The sooner and...

Online education company Udacity is growing its new Nanodegree program yet again – it’s adding two entirely new programs to the roster, including a new entry-level self-driving Nanodegree, as well as a brand new one focused on ‘flying cars’ (though it’s actually a bit more nuanced than that). The Flying Car program will include course material created by world-leading aeronautics and aerospace industry experts, including MIT professor Nicholas Roy, ETH Zurich professor and Kiva Systems co-founder Raffaelo D’Andrea, University of Toronto Aerospace Studies professor Angela Schoellig and Udacity founder Sebastian Thrun himself. Thrun is also CEO of personal aircraft startup...

Mike Rowe has had many jobs: actor, podcast host, even opera singer. But he is best known as a serial apprentice, participating in over 300 grubby gigs on the TV show “Dirty Jobs” and its successor “Somebody’s Gotta Do It.” Affably working alongside people who do the unglamorous tasks that keep our economy humming, such as castrating lambs or laundering tons of dirty diapers, Rowe’s wit and wisdom have made him a favorite with viewers. But over time, he realized that something decidedly un-funny was happening in our country. A narrative that college is the only path to success began...

First Lady Melania Trump’s focus on the well-being of children led her to visit the Youth Center on Joint Base Andrews, Md., Sept. 15. During Trump’s visit, she interacted with approximately 30 children, toured the youth center and learned about their educational and social initiatives, while also expressing her support for their sacrifices to the country. “I had the privilege to visit with some of your wonderful children at the youth center here on base,” Trump said. “I enjoy our time together, getting to know them, and want to thank everyone who helped make this visit possible.” As first...

Columbia University’s “Knight Institute” is suing the Trump administration on behalf of seven individuals alleging the president “blocked” them from reading his Twitter feed. The lawsuit, filed with the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, alleges that due to Mr. Trump’s usage of his personal Twitter account to engage with the public, his @realdonaldtrump Twitter account is a “public forum,” blocking citizens of access is “unconstitutional,” and his personal Twitter account should be treated as a public forum under federal law.

POLL: Should anti-Progressive speech be allowed on college campuses? No, speech or viewpoints that are offensive or biased against certain groups of people should not be permitted Yes, students should be exposed to all types of speech and viewpoints I'm not sure

Netflix pulled an episode of “Maya the Bee,” an animated children’s cartoon, after viewers noticed a penis drawing in the background. . . . Netflix has since pulled the episode (season 1, episode 35) from its streaming service. Maya the Bee is animated by French company Studio 100, which called the phallic flap “a very bad joke.”

The autumn equinox, otherwise know as the first day of fall, arrives on Friday, Sept. 22 in the Earth's northern hemisphere. The transition marks the time when the sun will be shining directly on the Earth's equator, bringing equal amounts of daylight and darkness. Here are 7 things to know about the fall equinox:

A black writer coming to Campbell University on Sept. 26 to talk about racism on college campuses has said President Donald Trump is a white supremacist, and the school is being criticized for hosting him. California-based Lawrence Ross, author of “The Divine Nine: The History of African American Fraternities and Sororities,” and “Blackballed: The Black & White Politics of Race on America’s Campuses,” is scheduled to speak at Campbell as part of “Risky Business Week.” On Sept. 13, Ross tweeted, “Whether or not Donald Trump is a white supremacist is settled law. He is,” launching a protracted exchange with people...

It’s a sad world we live in where talking about the Constitution is considered inappropriate for children. But for actress Janine Turner (Northern Exposure), these are the accusations she faced from parents of the students she teaches about the Constitution. A former board member, who is a current member of the #Resistance, pushed the school who hosted Turner to apologize for inviting her. . . . The board member, one Buddy Luce, told the Dallas News that he thought the speech was a partisan attempt to bias children. He said, “How they get their foot in the door is letting...

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Ironically the radical left protests pumping hormones into cattle and poultry, yet they applaud when it’s done to a child “Fallacies do not cease to be fallacies because they become fashions.”—G.K. Chesterson Concerned parents of school-aged children know that sexual revolutionaries and cultural Marxists are destroying our public schools and universities. But Charter schools were thought to be safe from these dark ideological radicals. Sexual revolutionaries and cultural Marxists believe that there are no differences between men and women, and that “male” and “female” are merely social constructs.

Jack Ma knows artificial intelligence will change the world. The Alibaba founder and chairman doesn't think we should be scared. But he does think we should be prepared for major disruptions to the job market. "In the last 200 years, manufacturing (has brought) jobs. But today -- because of the artificial intelligence, because of the robots -- manufacturing is no longer the main engine of creating jobs," Ma said Wednesday in a speech at the Bloomberg Global Business Forum in New York City. Moving forward, Ma said he believes the service industry will be the largest engine of job creation....

The Georgia Institute of Technology campus is in chaos tonight as protesters attack police in response to the shooting death of 21-year-old student Scout Schultz. A police car has been torched and several officers have been physically attacked.

In light of the ongoing violence on college campuses across the country, Middlebury College is instituting a “heckler’s veto” or temporary policy to shut down speakers whom they believe might be targets of threats or violence. A heckler’s veto is a term used when a government or institution of power shuts down someone’s First Amendment right of free speech to prevent or subvert potential violence that might be unleashed by a heckler in response to what they perceive as disagreeable speech. In layman’s terms, Middlebury is temporarily instituting an infringement on First Amendment rights. Stopping short of a flat-out ban...

CNBC reports Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh is spinning out graduates earning $200,000 to work in the rapidly growing field of self-driving cars. Pittsburgh has become America's unofficial self-driving car research capital. At least four companies in the autonomous vehicle business, including Uber, have set up offices in the city; they've been testing its self-driving cars on Pittsburgh's streets since 2016. Andrew Moore, the dean of Carnegie Mellon's computer science school, said that graduates of its computer vision program are getting job offers from these firms with pay packages of upwards of $200,000 right out of school. It's a situation...