Free Republic

Note to the reader: Dr. Henry Louis Gates has reach and influence in the academy, and that reach can–and has–severely damage careers. A pseudonym, in this case, is essential. Notes from a Phantom Negro. The Ivy League is not real life. College in general is not real life, and the Ivy League is a more fantastic version of college. The amenities are better, the rules are flexible and everyone, student and faculty alike, is well aware that the realities of life as most people know it are merely a peculiar footnote to the day to day of campus life. I...

One can only imagine what would happen if any passionate Christians still remaining at Yale demanded a Christ Month, with full staffing and funding from the university? What would the campus look like with crucifixes, crosses, and chalices hanging from trees like the pink and lavender streamers that presently cover the campus each April during the BGLAD Pride Month celebrations? Such an image of Christian images and icons at an Ivy League school founded 300 years ago by a Christian church is unimaginable, isn't it? The answer to that question provides a snapshot of the intellectual and moral deterioration of...

For two centuries, Wall Street survived wars, depressions, bank panics and terrorist attacks. Now Wall Street as we know it is dead. Gone. When a healthy and thriving person dies suddenly, a medical examiner may talk to family and friends to see if the deceased had recently changed behavior in some way. Wall Street did change radically in recent years in one notable way. Twenty or 30 years ago, it was common for the best and the brightest to be doctors or engineers. By the 2000s, they wanted to be investment bankers. When Wall Street was run by people randomly...

The heirs of an Apache chieftain whose remains are rumored to be held inside Yale's oldest secret society filed a lawsuit today demanding the return of their ancestor's skull. Twenty descendants of the legendary Apache chieftain Geronimo are suing the federal government, the University and the society Skull & Bones in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to seek the return of his remains as well as punitive damages. One hundred years ago today, Geronimo died of pneumonia at Fort Sill, Okla., but the suit alleges members of the society exhumed his remains in 1918 or 1919 and...

With conservatives so absent from university faculties like Harvard, I thought I'd share my correspondence with Donna Kalikow, of the kennedy School for Government at Harvard University.... let's see if this tactic works

College Recruiting Roulette Rules by: Deborah Lambert, January 27, 2009 Kathleen Kingsbury, in a Daily Beast exclusive, lets college admissions officers tell their personal stories about why some students make the cut and others don’t. She advises students who’ve mailed off their applications to “recalibrate your expectations based on your race, your wealth, and whether the NFL team in the city where that college is located is on a losing streak. The shadowy world of college admissions has left millions of confused and frustrated rejects in its wake. (So stop practicing the oboe.) Current and former admissions officers from colleges...

Chinese aim for the Ivy League The Boston Globe Sunday, January 4, 2009 BEIJING: The book spawned a genre, selling more than two million copies in China on the premise that any child, with the proper upbringing, could be Ivy League material. Now, eight years after the publication of "Harvard Girl," bookstore shelves here are laden with copycat titles like "How We Got Our Child Into Yale," "Harvard Family Instruction" and "The Door of the Elite." Their increasing popularity points to the preoccupation - some might say a single-minded national obsession - of a growing number of middle-class Chinese parents:...

The debate over the long-term value of a pricey private-school education is heating up, especially in this tough economy. Sure, everyone knows that by sticker price alone, public schools are a sweet deal, with out-of-state tuition and fees that run about 30 percent less than most of their private rivals—and in-state fees running up to three-quarters less. Indeed, the math is pretty jarring; the difference, on average, ranges between $7,700 and $18,600 a year, obviously no small matter with stock market woes depleting so many people's savings. But in the back of everybody's mind, there's that nagging question: Is the...

I KNOW Sarah Palin, and so does my wife. Neither of us ever actually met the governor of Alaska, but we grew up with her - in the small-town America despised by the leftwing elite. One gal-pal classmate of my wife's has even traveled from New York's Finger Lakes to Alaska to hunt moose with her husband. (Got one, too.) And no, Ms. Streisand, she isn't a redneck missing half her teeth - she's a lawyer. The sneering elites and their mediacrat fellow travelers just don't get it: How on earth could anyone vote for someone who didn't attend an...

The Perils of the Ivy League by Burt Prelutsky Ivy certainly looks nice, but you wouldn’t want to stroll through it. Here in Southern California, it’s common knowledge that most of our rodents hang out in the stuff. If bubonic plague ever breaks out in L.A., the source will be found lurking in the shrubbery. What has me dwelling on ivy is my recent realization that much of what I don’t like about American politics—namely, American politicians—can be traced back to Ivy League schools. It can’t just be a coincidence that four or five universities keep spitting out presidential candidates...

Four years at Yale costs $180,000. Here is how senior Aliza Shvarts planned to conclude hers: The art major would repeatedly artificially inseminate herself, then induce miscarriages, which she would record on video. She would build a four-foot-wide plastic cube and wrap it in layers of plastic. Between the layers would be Vaseline mixed with blood from the miscarriages. She would hang the cube at an exhibition and project video of the miscarriages onto four of its sides. "This piece," Shvarts wrote in the Yale Daily News, "is meant to call into question the relationship between form and function as...

The rhetoric of Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton about the sad state of America is reminiscent of the suspect populism of John Edwards, the millionaire lawyer who recently dropped out of the Democratic presidential race. Barack Obama may have gone to exclusive private schools. He and his wife may both be lawyers who between them have earned four expensive Ivy League degrees. They may make about a million dollars a year, live in an expensive home and send their kids to prep school. But they are still apparently first-hand witnesses to how the American dream has gone sour. Two...

Ahmadinejad to Speak on Campus By John Davisson SEPTEMBER 19, 2007 Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, president of Iran, has accepted an invitation to speak at Columbia from School of International and Public Affairs interim dean John Coatsworth, according to a spokesman. The event is scheduled to take place on Monday, September 24--the same day that Ahmadinejad is scheduled to address the UN General Assembly--as part of the World Leaders Forum and will be sponsored by SIPA. "Necessarily, on occasion this will bring us into contact with beliefs many, most, or even all of us will find offensive and even odious," University President...

A LETTER FROM ED HALDEMAN, CHAIR OF THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES, TO THE DARTMOUTH COMMUNITY Dear Members of the Dartmouth Community, Earlier today, the Dartmouth Board of Trustees took several steps to strengthen the College's governance. Given the intense debate about this issue in recent months, I wanted to write to you as soon as possible to tell you what we've done and why. Let me start by saying Dartmouth has never been stronger than it is today. It's one of the most selective institutions in the country. Our commitment to teaching has never been stronger and student satisfaction is...

Our culture touts free sex, but in reality life just does not seem to work this way. Sex is not free. The cost of attachment or resentment or insecurity often arises the morning after. In the past few years, particular attention has been given to sex at Harvard and Yale. In 2004, sophomores Camilla Hrdy and Katharina Cieplak-von Baldegg decided to start a magazine entitled H-Bomb, which the Harvard Crimson described as a “porn” magazine. The premiere issue included erotic fiction, nude photos and poetry about sex. In 2004, Eric Rubenstein, a Yale senior aiming for a Hollywood film career,...

I must confess to being disappointed five years ago when my son, Vineet, told me he had no interest in applying to any of the schools I consider elite. He said he would fit in better at a public state university and he didn't believe that choice would lessen his chances of career success. Perhaps it was the bias that my company's venture capitalists showed toward management teams from top-tier colleges that skewed my thinking. Whatever the cause, I have since concluded I shouldn't have been upset in the least. An education from one of the world's top schools may...

Right now, all over the country, high school students and their parents are scheming to get into the Ivy League. Young people are groomed practically from birth to be attractive to mysterious and all-powerful admissions committees guarding the gates of the eight universities that comprise the Ivies. Articles and books are written on packaging strategies, which classes and activities are "in" and which are now "passé," which provide an edge, and which might harm a student's chances. There is even a psychological malady known as The Yale Syndrome, a sort of obsession with college admission that creates an unusually proximate...

Cornellians in Sage Chapel fell silent April 19 as the university organist struck the first notes of a prelude in a ceremony memorializing the 33 students and faculty at Virginia Tech university who had lost their lives three days earlier in a campus shooting by a Korean student, who subsequently killed himself."We are one," said Cornell President David Skorton. "We are one community, one people, one planet. We are here today to affirm that oneness ... We are here to bear witness to the passing of the 33 members of our family at Virginia Tech University who have met an...

Sean Barrett has seen a lot in his four years at Harvard. He’s consistently been among the top Crimson finishers at various regional meets since his freshman year. He’s seen coaches come and go. He’s competed with and against formidable tracksters across New England and beyond. Now he’s getting ready to embark on a journey that will show him more about himself and his world than he could ever imagine. Barrett has joined the U.S. Marine Corps and has committed, initially, to serving four years. It’s a decision that seems almost incongruous for a bright athlete from the Ivy League....

Abortion 101 at Yale By Michelle Malkin   ·   January 25, 2007 06:25 AM Dawn Eden reports that Yale medical students are celebrating "Roe v. Wade week" by holding a seminar, open to non-medical students, on how to perform abortions. --- Yale 'Roe vs. Wade Week' teaches non-medical students how to make a baby go (Whiffen)poof Good morning! I'm exhausted after taking two trains and a cab back from New Haven, so I'll leave it to Stephen of  For God, for Country, and for Yale to offer details (and, I hope, photos) of my Theology on Tap talk. I can tell...