Free Republic

The following is adapted from a talk delivered on September 12, 2023, at the Allan P. Kirby, Jr. Center for Constitutional Studies and Citizenship on Hillsdale’s Washington, D.C., campus, as part of the AWC Family Foundation Lecture Series. The transgender movement is pressing its agenda everywhere. Most publicly, activist teachers are using classrooms to propagandize on its behalf and activist health professionals are promoting the mutilation of children under the euphemistic banner of “gender-affirming care.” The sudden and pervasive rise of this movement provokes two questions: where did it come from, and how has it proved so successful? The story...

The alliance between the international left and Islamic groups has been strong for years, only suffering some strains recently over the left’s insistence on pushing the trans madness and related insanities upon the rest of us. But leftists have generally tended to ally with victimhood propaganda organizations such as the Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), not with out-and-out jihadis. However, as we see an ugly recrudescence of antisemitism around the world in the wake of the Hamas jihad massacres of Oct. 7, one far-left American professor has crossed the line and unhesitatingly named Hamas and Hizballah as allies of...

Ever since David Horowitz broke from the radical left back in the 1980s, he has been trying to warn conservatives that they don’t really understand the core principle of the left, and the depths of the left’s power-mad depravity. Conservatives too often think that the Israel-Palestine conflict, or civil rights, crime, income inequality, transgender ideology, climate change, etc, etc., are discrete issues to be argued against the left with reason and facts. To which Horowitz replies: The issue is not the issue—the issue is revolution! (And a key corollary is: the more violent, the better. Hence the approval and celebration...

Humanities professors say organization evading moral, professional duties Dozens of humanities scholars cancelled their membership with their field's leading professional academic organization ahead of its annual convention, in retaliation for the group refusing to impose boycott, divestment, and sanctions against Israel. The defecting professors wrote to the Modern Language Association—published in the days leading up to the conference being held this week in New York City—that they will not be renewing their membership, due to the organization "disgracefully" voting in June against BDS and in favor of a statement denouncing academic boycotts. Timothy Reiss, a professor emeritus of comparative literature...

A senior Hamas terrorist decided he wanted 72 virgins without killing himself. Instead he picked some of the terrorist group’s little human shields for the honor. According to Al Bawabh News, Hamas is trying to hush up a major sex scandal involving young boys in a Gaza mosque. A prominent Hamas member is accused of engaging in sex acts with young boys after enticing them with promises of teaching them Jihad and the Quran. According to the story, he pretended to be teaching the boys martial arts. He evaluated their “performance” and if he felt that they wouldn’t resist,...

Affirmative Action for Conservatives by: Deborah Lambert, May 19, 2008 Does it bother most students at the University of Colorado-Boulder, that their school is known as a den of left-wing lunacy? Probably not. In fact, “sophomore Marissa Malouff” views her campus as a sort of re-education camp,” said the Wall Street Journal. Although “sheltered rich kids from out-of-state might come for the snow-boarding, . . .while they’re here they get dunked in a simmering pot of left-wing idealism. And that, in her view, is how it should be.” But “Bud Peterson,” the school’s Republican Chancellor, thinks that campus diversity should...

No Relation to Rhett by: Bethany Stotts, February 13, 2008 Chicago, Ill.—At a panel on “Revision as Writing, Writing as Revision,” Modern Language Association (MLA) panelists offered tips to increase the clarity and quality of academic writing ... In direct contrast to the other panelists’ emphasis on cogency and understandable writing, Birkenstein-Graff suggested that academic writers look to “Bad Writing Award” winner Judith Butler for inspiration. According to the UI Chicago lecturer, Butler is a “masterful, masterful writer” who “directly engages what her harshest critics say about her work.”... One topical sentence from Butler’s 2004 Bodies That Matter reads “The...

Furor erupts over Web site monitoring of Middle Eastern scholars By RON TODT The Associated Press 9/27/02 10:22 PM PHILADELPHIA (AP) -- A pro-Israel organization has set up a Web site to monitor professors and universities for pro-Arab, anti-Israel bias -- a move some academics are decrying as campus McCarthyism and attempted intimidation. The Philadelphia-based Middle East Forum said it organized the Campus Watch site to counter pervasive bias in universities' Middle Eastern studies. The site names schools and specific professors. Forum director Daniel Pipes said the think tank hopes eventually to monitor 250 North American academic institutions. "Our goal...