Free Republic

STUDENTS at America's prestigious Ivy League universities are rebelling against their colleges' stuffy reputations, casting off society's norms along with their clothes to hold naked parties. The Pundits, a secretive society at Yale University, initiated the events - which profess to be non-sexual in nature - in the mid-1990s, open to a select few. The society claims that president George Bush's daughter, Barbara, attended a naked party during her second year, in 2002. The White House has always declined to comment.

Mon 8 Jan 2007 Birthday-suit parties all the rage for Ivy League students CRAIG HOWIE STUDENTS at America's prestigious Ivy League universities are rebelling against their colleges' stuffy reputations, casting off society's norms along with their clothes to hold naked parties. The Pundits, a secretive society at Yale University, initiated the events - which profess to be non-sexual in nature - in the mid-1990s, open to a select few. The society claims that president George Bush's daughter, Barbara, attended a naked party during her second year, in 2002. The White House has always declined to comment. But the naked parties...

Famed as a hotbed of debate over academic freedom, New York's most elite school is also a playpen for sexual hijinks, sophomoric antics and the wacky indulgences of the children of the rich. While their parents shell out $33,246 a year in tuition, Columbia University students doff their clothes at naked parties, flock to sex toys workshops, broadcast porn on campus TV, bake anatomically correct pies for the "Erotic Cake-Baking Contest" and heat up the steps of the Low Library in a mass makeout session called the "Big Kiss." And of course, there's always the stimulating game, "Guess the Number...

In public elementary schools across the nation, students are taught that America is a land of equality and tolerance. We are all created equal, and we should treat each other with dignity and respect, regardless of race, gender or religion. However, it appears that some of us have forgotten these grammar school lessons. We have turned our fear of living in a post-9/11 society into intolerance towards Arabs and Muslims. A poll done earlier this year by the Washington Post and ABC News found that 46 percent of Americans think poorly of Islam today, along with 33 percent that believe...

Ivy League CEOs Today's Wall Street Journal reports that American business is not elitist: 'Any College Will Do' The college diplomas of the nation's top executives tell an intriguing story: Getting to the corner office has more to do with leadership talent and a drive for success than it does with having an undergraduate degree from a prestigious university. Most CEOs of the biggest corporations didn't attend Ivy League or other highly selective colleges. They went to state universities, big and small, or to less-known private colleges.... Some 10% of CEOs currently heading the top 500 companies received undergraduate degrees...

The left-leaning faction that dominates American higher education doesn't take kindly to strangers--particularly those who challenge the prevailing academic orthodoxies. Just ask Harvard's Larry Summers. Or consider the escalating governance controversy at Dartmouth College. A few reformers have achieved a bit of influence, and now the New Hampshire school's insular establishment is doing everything it can to run them out of Hanover. Since 1891, Dartmouth has been among the handful of colleges and universities that allows alumni to elect leaders directly. At present, eight of the 18 members of the governing Board of Trustees are chosen by the popular vote...

The left-leaning faction that dominates American higher education doesn't take kindly to strangers -- particularly those who challenge the prevailing academic orthodoxies. Just ask Harvard's Larry Summers. Or consider the escalating governance controversy at Dartmouth College. A few reformers have achieved a bit of influence, and now the New Hampshire school's insular establishment is doing everything it can to run them out of Hanover. Since 1891, Dartmouth has been among the handful of colleges and universities that allows alumni to elect leaders directly... In practice, the Trustees have been largely ornamental overseers, rubber-stamping the management decisions of the "progressive" college...

**Vanity** Dear Fellow FReepers: I am counseling a group of high school seniors with a keen interest in attending the Ivy League - we have toured Princeton, Yale, Dartmouth and Harvard as well as Stanford. These are conservative (mostly Christian) students and I am well aware of the perils of the Ivy League - I've even had them read "Poison Ivy" and had them consult the NR's guide to colleges. I believe that they are prepared for the left wing bias. That being said, (and NR giving Princeton more latitude for being fairer than other schools to diversity of thought)...

Penn joined the growing list of universities last week opening offices in the nation's capital in order to protect the interests of higher education. The Office of Federal Affairs -- previously located on Penn's campus -- was relocated to Washington last Wednesday in order to establish a more permanent, visible Penn presence, Vice President of Government and Community Relations Vanda McMurtry said. "It's a clear demonstration that Penn wants to play a broader role in Washington in national affairs and wants to be more vigilant than it's been in the past looking out for its own interests," McMurtry said. University...

Conservatives in control of an Ivy League school? This dream might become a reality as conservative alumni fight for their rights to be candidates for the Board of Trustees at Dartmouth. This battle began two years ago when two candidates who were endorsed by the Alumni Association were defeated by two “outsider” candidates. Another independent candidate also won a position on the board. Since that time, the University has tried to rewrite the Board’s constitution and bylaws to prevent such a thing from occurring ever again. The conservative blogs and media caught wind of this and since then the Battle...

Neoconservatism is an elite calling. It thrives in think tanks, not union halls; its proponents want most of all to influence the powerful. No wonder Ivy League labels have always been important to neocons. This fixation on intellectual prestige explains the recent neocon uprising over the possibility that Juan Cole, scholar and blogger, would become a Yale professor. It was one thing for Cole to hold forth from the University of Michigan, where he has been a professor for twenty years. But Yale would provide "honor" and "imprimatur," says Scott Johnson, a right-wing blogger. "That's a huge thing, to have...

If a liberal bias can be proven anywhere in academia, it is most likely to be discovered among the enclaves known as the Ivy League. Brown University is certainly no exception, as Travis James Rowley learned as he began his undergraduate journey there in Providence, Rhode Island. The messages he received from the university and from student organizations that were encouraged by the university were overwhelmingly liberal. As Rowley writes in his book, Out of Ivy:How the Liberal Ivy Created a Committed Conservative this is what he heard: • Have sex. Lots of it. And with as many partners as...

CAMBRIDGE – On Saturday, March 18, Harvard University will host the Iran Freedom Concert, a rally organized by Harvard students to support their counterparts in Iran. "As tensions rise over nuclear issues, our diverse student coalition wants to spotlight the human side of the Iran crisis," said co-organizer Adam Scheuer, a senior and editor at the Harvard Middle East Review. "Iranian students are denied basic rights Americans take advantage of every day. But there is a brave student movement in Iran working for change, and we need to support them." Widespread student protests in Iran have broken out in recent...

The College Rejection Bonanza April 7th, 2006 “April is the cruelest month” – T.S. Eliot, The Wasteland It is rejection time for almost all the applicants to elite colleges and universities. America’s most prestigious schools, which pride themselves on their ever-lower acceptance rates, are basking in their record rejections of hopeful aspirants. Harvard, Yale and Princeton rejected 91% of applicants, Stanford and Columbia 89%, Brown 86%, Dartmouth 85%, Penn 82%. MIT, Amherst, Williams and Swarthmore all rejected 80% or more of their applicants. Among the top state schools, Berkeley rejected 76%, and UCLA 73% of applicants. I suspect Duke, given...

Intelligent design goes Ivy League Cornell offers course despite president denouncing theory -------------------------------------------------------- Posted: April 11, 2006 1:00 a.m. Eastern © 2006 WorldNetDaily.com Cornell University plans to offer a course this summer on intelligent design, using textbooks by leading proponents of the controversial theory of origins. The Ivy League school's course – "Evolution and Design: Is There Purpose in Nature?" – aims to "sort out the various issues at play, and to come to clarity on how those issues can be integrated into the perspective of the natural sciences as a whole." The announcement comes just half a year after...

See for example this thread first. Have you heard the latest from Yale? (It's certainly "beyond the pale") To admit a man From the Taliban No wonder they want Bush to fail! Alternative middle lines, containing an assonance:To admit Hashemi our sworn enemy

Something is very wrong at our elite universities. Last month Larry Summers resigned as president of Harvard; today Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi will speak by video to a conference at Columbia University that his regime is cosponsoring. (Columbia won't answer questions about how much funding it got from Libya or what implied strings were attached.) Then there's Yale, which for three weeks has refused to make any comment or defense beyond a vague 144-word statement about its decision to admit Sayed Rahmatullah Hashemi--a former ambassador-at-large of the murderous Afghan Taliban--as a special student. The three backers of the foundation that,...

Asset classes--stocks, bonds, real estate, collectibles--are always competing with one another. Each clamors for our spare dollars. For periods we favor one asset class over others (e.g., stocks from 1982 to 2000). But when a collective judgment is reached that a particular asset class has been bid up too high, dollars are pulled and the asset class shrinks in value. Real estate may now be at that point. I can think of only one asset class that in my adult life has outperformed GDP growth plus inflation yet has been blissfully immune from busts--any busts at all. That is the...

Since the New York Times and Wall Street Journal broke the news about the admission of Taliban official Sayeed Rahmatullah Hashemi to a special student program at Yale, we’ve received numerous emails from outraged Yale Alumni. One email stood out from the rest — "I won’t give Yale one red cent this year, but maybe I will give them a red fingernail instead!" She was referring to the Taliban’s policy of pulling the fingernails off of Afghani women who dared to wear fingernail polish. Some of these women even had their thumbs sliced off as punishment. To date, Mr. Rahmatullah...

In the grand scheme of things, the recent resignation of Harvard's president, Lawrence Summers, was a small episode. But its implications are large and reach beyond Harvard -- and well beyond the academic world. David Riesman said that we are living in the cathedrals of learning, without the faith that built those cathedrals. We are also living in a free society without the faith that built that society -- and without the conviction and dedication needed to sustain it. The faith came first. Centuries ago, farmers and others scattered throughout New England made whatever small contributions they could, whether in...