Free Republic

The initiative, which will reportedly be overseen by a DOJ Civil Rights Division heavy with Trump-appointees, would be charged with hiring attorneys to explore “investigations and possible litigation related to intentional race-based discrimination in college and university admissions,” the Times reported. The project’s reveal prompted immediate concern from civil rights advocates, with Kristen Clarke of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law calling the action “deeply disturbing.” “It would be a dog whistle that could invite a lot of chaos and unnecessarily create hysteria among colleges and universities who may fear that the government may come down on them...

To “solve the problem of meritocracy,” one professor argues that elite universities should use an “admissions lottery” to select which students they accept. Joseph Soares, who teaches in the department of Sociology at Wake Forest University, advanced the claim in an article for the Journal of Ethnic and Racial Studies, in which he argues that college entrance exams like the SAT and ACT “are predictively weak and biased, stigmatizing minorities as underperformers” and should therefore be disregarded.

Algebra is one of the biggest hurdles to getting a high school or college degree — particularly for students of color and first-generation undergrads. It is also the single most failed course in community colleges across the country. So if you're not a STEM major (science, technology, engineering, math), why even study algebra?

For the past six years, I have taught an undergraduate course on international economics at Johns Hopkins University. Most of my students thought it was a very good course. So I was shocked when, on December 6, 2016, I was met at the door of my classroom by Johns Hopkins security personnel and barred from entering. The next day, I received a letter from my dean suspending me from my teaching duties—just three classes before the end of the semester. What had I done to cause such a reaction by the administration? I had told a joke when discussing off-shoring,...

In USC’s lecture halls, labs and executive offices, Dr. Carmen A. Puliafito was a towering figure. The dean of the Keck School of Medicine was a renowned eye surgeon whose skill in the operating room was matched by a gift for attracting money and talent to the university. There was another side to the Harvard-educated physician. During his tenure as dean, Puliafito kept company with a circle of criminals and drug users who said he used methamphetamine and other drugs with them, a Los Angeles Times investigation found. Puliafito, 66, and these much younger acquaintances captured their exploits in photos...

"The road to hell is paved with good intentions," goes the line so often used to describe hare-brained liberal schemes. That vintage phrase captures perfectly the quagmire in which Bernie and Jane Sanders find themselves rapidly sinking in the saga of Burlington College. But the tale provides so much more than affirming that age-old aphorism. It offers a microcosmic view into the mind and methodology of liberal policymakers everywhere. In short, the scheme concocted by the former Democratic Socialist presidential candidate's wife, Jane Sanders, when she was president of Burlington College serves up everything we've come to expect of modern...

Essex County College has fired adjunct professor Lisa Durden after she made racially insensitive comments in an interview with Tucker Carlson on Fox News, according to a new report by the Associated Press. The college’s president, Anthony Munroe, announced the decision Friday, two weeks after Durden went on “Tucker Carlson Tonight” to discuss an “all-black Memorial Day celebration” hosted by a Black Lives Matter group. When asked by Carlson about the event, Durden interrupted the host, saying “boo hoo hoo. You white people are angry because you couldn’t use your white privilege card to get invited” to the Black Lives...

On Thursday, President Donald Trump signed an executive order to substantially increase the number of U.S. apprenticeships from the current 500,000 (minuscule for the size of the economy) by doubling the amount the government spends on apprenticeship programs. Trump’s emphasis on this plan is cause for optimism that he will significantly improve the number and quality of apprenticeships in the economy. Trump’s plan will be a boon to employers. First, they will have a strong role in its composition through a task force that Trump announced. Successful apprenticeship programs work best when designed by employers around their own needs. The...

The Latest on President Donald Trump (all times Eastern Daylight Time): 5:30 p.m. President Donald Trump says he wants every high school in America to offer apprenticeship programs. Trump also says at a round table conversation at Waukesha County Technical College in Wisconsin that he loves the "name Apprentice" — a reference to the reality television show he used to host.....

Apparently three Philadelphia-area schools have decided they can't wait until Labor Day to start molding and shaping the young minds attached to the students who enroll there. Swarthmore, Haverford and Bryn Mawr got together to offer a “Tri-College Identity, Equity, and Social Justice Summer Institute.” As Swarthmore's pr department explains in a press release: "The Tri-College Identity, Equity and Social Justice Summer Institute is designed to help students enhance both their leadership skills and their individual/group identity issues within the context of exploring issues of gender, race, sexuality, socio-economic class, spirituality, power, and privilege. To this end, intensive workshops on...

There is no such thing as free college tuition. While it may be free for the fortunate few who get a free college education, somebody pays for it, somebody always pays. And if you are wondering who that somebody is, all you have to do is look in the mirror. So, it would be refreshing if free-stuff politicians, like Republican Gov. Charlie Baker and Boston Mayor Marty Walsh, a Democrat -- the mix-and-match couple of Massachusetts politics -- actually took the time to thank the people who make their free-stuff giveaways possible. W

"Too many people are going to college," writes my American Enterprise Institute colleague Charles Murray. That's not a response to the mob of students who attacked him and the liberal professor who had invited him to speak back in March at Middlebury College. It's the title of the third chapter in his 2008 book, "Real Education: Four Simple Truths for Bringing America's Schools Back to Reality." Since Murray wrote those words, higher-education enrollment has in fact declined, from 20.6 million in 2011 to 19 million in 2016, according to Ohio University economists Richard Vedder and Justin Strehle, who wrote about...

A new policy adopted by the Department of Justice (DOJ) will close a tiny loophole that allowed foreign nationals from non-accredited institution to obtain H-1B visas to remain in the U.S. as workers. Every year, more than 100,000 foreign workers are brought to the U.S. on the H-1B visa. Most recently, that number has ballooned to potentially hundreds of thousands each year, as universities and non-profits are exempt from the cap. With more entering the U.S. through the visa, Americans are often replaced. Under the new guidelines, the school where a foreign national obtains their degree must be an accredited...

Students at Evergreen State College are furious that a video documenting their anarchic behavior has been made public, The College Fix reports. The footage shows students going berserk, swearing like your mother never heard and screaming about “racist white teachers,” “white-assed administrators,” and the obligatory “black power” slogans during what was supposed to be a “meeting” between the malcontent students, college president George Bridges and other college administrators. Activists are not pleased that the embarrassing video can now be seen by the world on the internet, and they they are demanding that the “stolen” document be “taken down” by this...

We heard Donald Trump was evil, racist, and a sexist homophobe. Little evidence was presented to support this beyond Trump's desire to end illegal immigration and to block a massive influx of refugees from terror hotbeds from entering the United States. It was all shameful, cynical politics. And some Americans are finally realizing they were lied to by the media and the Democratic Party. Despite the boos for Education Secretary Betsy DeVos at Bethune-Cookman, leaders of historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) are noticing that Trump is a step up from Obama: Following his inauguration, Trump’s most overt outreach to...

On a winter afternoon that threatened tornadoes, retired federal judge U.W. Clemon stood at a window 31 floors above Birmingham, looking south. In the foreground was the University of Alabama at Birmingham, whose medical center powers the city’s economy. To the west, railroad tracks snaked between warehouses, vestiges of boom times, when Birmingham was known as “the Pittsburgh of the South.” On the horizon rose Red Mountain, a slight green ridge. Clustered on the other side of its hump, outside the Birmingham city limits, are some of the wealthiest suburbs in Alabama: Mountain Brook, Vestavia Hills, Hoover and Homewood. They...

Many people have called for changes on college campuses. To a certain extent this has been treated with humor-based dismissal. The branding of these children acting in a petulant manner is referred to as "snowflakes." But now we have reached a dangerous tipping point that threatens to destroy the freedoms we all savor as part of our heritage. This occurred when Ann Coulter was stopped from speaking at U.C. Berkeley. It was really terrible when others were stopped from speaking because of obnoxious behavior or actual physical violence. For example, a speech by Milos Yiannopoulos was stopped because of protests...

Racial unrest has wracked St. Olaf College, a small campus in rural Minnesota, with students essentially taking over the campus with aggressive protests that forced administrators to cancel classes on Monday so demonstrators could air their grievances in a day-long sit in.

At the University of Florida, a student was recently penalized for writing “man” instead of “humankind” in a class paper. History major Martin Poirier wrote “Water is a thing prior to man” on a paper for a history class called “History of Water.” “Thoughtful paper, although the writing-mechanics errors are killing you,” Professor Jack Davis wrote at the bottom of the paper. He gave the student a B minus, according to a copy of the essay published in the student news outlet the Daily Nerv. Davis circled “man” and referenced his Writing Mechanics Exercise #20, which draws a distinction between...

From the "It's come to this" and the "What will they think of next?" department: The National Union of Students warned audience members at its conference that they must not clap or cheer during speeches because clapping and cheering make deaf people feel excluded. According to an article in The Telegraph, attendees at last week’s conference were warned that clapping and cheering could have a “serious impact” on deaf participants, and they were instructed to use “jazz hands” to show their support instead. “No whooping, it does have a serious impact on some delegates’ ability to access [the] conference,”...