Free Republic

Charlie Kirk’s murder proves free speech absolutism cannot withstand lies turned lethal—America must confront hate and incitement with lawful strength, not naïve trust.The murdered Charlie Kirk was a martyr to free speech and the belief in the power of reasoned argument to overcome lies and evil. “Hate speech does not exist legally in America,” he wrote on X in May of 2024. “There’s ugly speech. There’s gross speech. There’s evil speech. And ALL of it is protected by the First Amendment.” There is much to admire in Charlie’s devotion to those principles, but his murder put those principles to...

Once again, the United States is using lethal force off its shores. In recent weeks, American drones and warships have sunk or disabled a string of speedboats in international waters off Venezuela. Washington says the vessels belonged to narcoterrorist networks tied to the Maduro regime and Tren de Aragua and that they were carrying cocaine and fentanyl precursors bound for the United States. At least 83 alleged traffickers and others are dead. Caracas calls this extrajudicial murder. Human-rights groups call it assassination. Cable-news panels and UN press releases are already rehearsing the same ritual question: Is this legal under international...

A Brazilian Harvard Law School professor who pleaded guilty last month to illegally firing an air rifle outside a Boston-area synagogue — and told police he was “hunting rats” — has agreed to leave the US following his arrest by Immigration and Customs Enforcement this week. Carlos Portugal Gouvea, 43, copped Nov. 13 to a single charge of illegal use of the air rifle in connection with the Oct. 2 incident outside of Brookline’s Temple Beth Zion, which took place on Yom Kippur, the holiest day in Judaism. The scholar was arrested by ICE Boston Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO)...

Earlier this week, in ‘Easy A’s for Ivy League Idiots’ I wrote about the massive level of grade inflation in the Ivy League. In 2005, a quarter of Harvard students received A’s. In 2025, it’s over 60%. At Yale, A’s went from 67% of grades in 2010 to 78% of grades in 2023. The prestigious university has had awkward moments like before, such as when 91% of students graduated with honors in 2001, and these days it tries to keep the number of honors graduates in the 50s. But much like shopping in a supermarket, it’s hard to avoid the...

Harvard University’s Office of Undergraduate Education is raising concerns about mounting grade inflation, reporting that the school’s grading system is “damaging the academic culture of the College.” The office sent a 25-page report to faculty and students, stating that 60 percent of all undergraduate grades are now As. This is a 35 percent increase compared to 20 years ago, according to The Harvard Crimson. Veronica Bryant, academic affairs fellow at the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, told The Fix that if Harvard allows grade inflation to skyrocket, the problem will worsen at other schools. “‘As goes Harvard, so goes...

Does 3I/ATLAS have interstellar headlights? Harvard scientist Avi Loeb speculated that NASA’s recently released photos of 3I/ATLAS could potentially point to its artificial origins — and even wondered if the so-called comet was purposely targeting and sweeping meteorites out of its path. He posited his theory in a viral new blog post on Medium. “The extended glow is ahead of the object, not trailing it as expected for a cometary tail,” the astrophysicist told The Post. “In the case of a technological object, it could be a beam of particles or light illuminating the path forward to avoid the hazards...

Kirill Dmitriev — Vladmir Putin’s special envoy and head of the Russian Direct Investment Fund — is suddenly ubiquitous. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has been largely quiet since his maximalist negotiating approach with Team Trump failed. Moscow, presumably largely guided by Lavrov, after winning a concession on Tomahawk missiles, opted to continue Putin’s hardline demands for ending the war in Ukraine ahead of the proposed Trump-Putin summit in Budapest. NATO would have to admit that it was the root cause of the war. Kyiv would have to cede all of the Donbas, and the Armed Forces of Ukraine would...

Disgraced former Harvard President Larry Summers spent his honeymoon on billionaire pedophile Jeffrey Epstein's private island after marrying one of the school's English professors. The professor, Elisa New, flew to Little Saint James on Epstein's infamous 'Lolita Express' with Summers, who left the school earlier this week over embarrassing emails where he referred to Epstein as his 'wingman.'The couple flew from Bedford, Massachusetts to the island on December 11, 2005, ten days after their wedding and while Summers was still president, according to publicly available flight logs obtained by The Harvard Crimson.The logs show Summers and New flew alongside Epstein's...

When former Harvard President Lawrence H. Summers was pursuing a romantic relationship with a woman he described as a mentee, he turned to a longtime associate for guidance: convicted sex offender Jeffrey E. Epstein.

At many of the country’s most prestigious universities, an “A” has become a default instead of a distinction. It used to be a mark that indicated academic excellence and proficiency, yet lately it seems like almost everyone is “exceptional.” Now, Harvard’s much-remarked-upon grade-inflation report, released late last month, confirms what many have suspected for years: Grades at elite colleges have lost their meaning. According to the report, in 2005 “A’s” accounted for 24 percent of all grades given at Harvard College. In 2025, that number jumped to over 60 percent. Even the cutoff mark for summa cum laude status has...

Bill Clinton’s Administration was infested with creeps who reportedly visited Epstein Island. President Trump is right. It is time to investigate the Clintons and the entire Democrat Party for their connections to Jeffrey Epstein. Bill Clinton We know that the Clintons are closely tied to Jeffrey Epstein. We reported in 2019 that investigative reporter Conchita Sarnoff, the author of “Trafficking” on the Jeffrey Epstein case, joined Shannon Bream and said Bill Clinton flew on Epstein’s plane 27 times and ALMOST EVERY TIME that Clinton was on the plane there were underage girls on the plane. Sarnoff also said Bill Clinton...

Emails revealed that Summers sought advice from Epstein on romantically pursuing a woman he referred to as his mentee.Summers’ comment comes after a senior Trump administration official and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) each called on institutions to sever ties with Summers.The statement leaves question marks hanging over the fate of several positions Summers occupies, which include a board seat at OpenAI, a tenured position at Harvard, an unpaid nonresident fellow position at the liberal Center for American Progress think tank and a paid contributor role at Bloomberg News. A Summers spokesperson declined to answer a direct question about those roles.Earlier...

Mysterious interstellar object 3I/ATLAS has reemerged from behind the Sun, allowing astronomers to once again get a glimpse at the rare visitor...and is expected to make its closest pass of the Earth just days before Christmas on its way back out of our star system.... .. judging by the latest data, ...Loeb suggests that if 3I/ATLAS really is a visitor from a technological civilization — a possibility he’s floated repeatedly — then it may be trying to boost its exit from the solar system to a breakneck pace. (Let’s face it: getting away from Earth as rapidly as possible makes...

The FBI said on Tuesday that two men from Massachusetts were arrested following an explosion at the Harvard Medical School building over the weekend. FBI Boston posted on X on Tuesday regarding the arrests, saying, "BREAKING: Special agents & officers with FBI Boston's Joint Terrorism Task Force & Harvard University Police Dept. have arrested two Massachusetts men in connection with an explosion at Harvard Medical School. Details to follow at a 1:00 p.m. news conference with [U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Massachusetts] at the federal courthouse in Boston." Early Saturday morning, an officer who responded to a fire...

An explosion rocked a Harvard Medical School building early Saturday morning, authorities said. The unknown device exploded on the fourth floor of the Goldenson building on the Harvard Longwood Campus’s main quad shortly before 3 a.m., The Harvard Crimson reported citing authorities. Two individuals were witnessed running out of the building at the time of the detonation, the outlet said, citing the Harvard University Police Department. An officer with the university failed in an attempt to stop them, before entering the building to check on the alarm, The Boston Globe reported. The Boston Fire Department determined the explosion was intentional...

Do people need tutorials on masturbation? Apparently at Harvard they do. Students at the Ivy League institution are set to host their annual Sex Week celebration, slated for the first week of November. On tap this year? A “BDSM and Kinks” workshop and a “Touch, Techniques and Tools” seminar, according to the scheduled of events posted on social media. Another event will feature a “queer and trans sex educator,” co-hosted by the Harvard Undergraduate Queer Advocates group, a promotional flier states. There will also be a “condoms and lubricant 101” event, sex trivia party, and “Sensual Strokes: Painting Your Pleasure”...

Nick Norwitz, a doctorate student at Harvard University, found that contrary to the beliefs of many experts, his cholesterol levels actually dropped. After the month-long experiment that saw him eat the equivalent of 24 eggs per day his low-density lipoprotein (LDL) levels, or 'bad' cholesterol, fell by 18 percent. Experts have demonized cholesterol in eggs for decades, warning that eating them may cause a surge in LDL levels and raise the risk of complications. Dr Norwitz has a PhD in human brain metabolism from the University of Oxford and is completing his medical doctorate at Harvard University.

The president of the National Association of Scholars, Stephen H. Balch, Ph.D., had this to say about the state of education in the U.S. today: "Trendy courses, bloated bureaucracies, and intolerance toward students and professors holding politically incorrect views have become the norm on the majority of our campuses. Grades are routinely inflated and curricula dumbed down, while truth and intellectual integrity are treated as forms of racial, sexual, and capitalist oppression." I'm sure most of us agree that religion has no place in our educational system, but neither do personal politics and ideologies. A Luntz poll of Ivy League...

In 2019, I read an article about Larry Summers and Harvard that changed the way I look at the world. The author, writing under the pseudonym “J. Stone,” argued that the day Larry Summers resigned as president of Harvard University marked a turning point in our culture. The entire “woke” era could be extrapolated from that moment, from the details of how Summers was cancelled and, most of all, who did the cancelling: women. The basic facts of the Summers case were familiar to me. On January 14, 2005, at a conference on “Diversifying the Science and Engineering Workforce,” Larry...

Conservatives are nowhere to be seen in a Harvard University course focused on black women in politics, according to a copy of the syllabus obtained by The College Fix.Dr. Mildred Jefferson, the first black woman to graduate from Harvard University's medical school; Courtesy of American Life League'History 167: Race, Gender, and the Law Through the Archive' praises First Lady Michelle Obama, failed Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, and Vice President Kamala Harris for having “left their mark on 21st-century politics and grassroots organizing.”The course says it will examine black women in the 20th century who “shap[ed] politics, grassroots organizing, the...