Free Republic

<p>Two of three hikers being detained in Iran are Bay Area residents and freelance journalists.</p> <p>Shane Bauer and Sarah Shourd, both UC Berkeley graduates, worked as freelance journalists affiliated with New American Media in downtown San Francisco, according to Sandy Close, executive director.</p>

AT A TIME WHEN the nation has turned to the left, one of the more liberal universities in the nation will be studying right-wing movements. Although the timing is odd, investigation of the right is a welcome academic pursuit. Thanks to an anonymous $777,000 donation a Center for the Comparative Study of Right-wing Movements will be established at UC Berkeley. Researchers will analyze right-wing groups in the United States and abroad and compare them. Larry Rosenthal, a sociologist who will oversee the center, is on target in saying that conservative movements have been overlooked in academia, which tends to be...

In a statement, the Zionist Freedom Alliance said “we call on state officials, the President of the University of California, the Chancellor, the Dean of Students, faculty, and the student body to take a unified stand against the continued harassment of Jewish and pro-Israel students on this campus" Arab students disrupted a pro-Israel event at the campus of the University of California at Berkeley Thursday night, unfurling a large Palestinian flag in front of a crowd of hundreds of supporters of Israel who were enjoying a pro-Israel hip-hop concert. The event was sponsored by the Zionist Freedom Alliance student group....

A weekend in Nebraska isn't everyone's idea of fun, but hundreds of college students are disappointed they won't be able to campaign for Barack Obama there or in other swing states after a mysterious donor backed out. Students from around the country, including a large contingent from UC Berkeley, had planned to spend the weekend before Election Day fanning out to places such as North Carolina, Georgia and other battleground states. And much of the financial burden was to be borne by an American in Italy known as David Gall. But, as of last weekend, Gall is gone, too badly...

BERKELEY - Crews began cutting down trees next to Memorial Stadium at UC Berkeley late Friday, 21 months after activists climbed into the trees to protest the university's plan to raze them to build a $140 million sports training center center. Work crews with chainsaws and bulldozers arrived at the university grove Friday and by 4 p.m. six trees had been chopped down. Clad in black ski masks, the four remaining tree protesters who were driven into a single redwood several months ago, remained in the tree Friday and at times sparred with arborists, tossing a bottle and branches toward...

Self righteousness can be a disease afflicting the true believers in any cause. But the animal rights movement seems to be home to more than its share of people who believe their cause is so right that they are excused from normal human constraints. They have no more consideration of others than the beasts they whose interests they place above humanity's. More than two decades ago, a childhood friend who grew up to become a world-renowned medical researcher, whose work has improved the lives of countless people suffering a horrible affliction (and who has had the extraordinary honor among medical...

The University of California at Berkeley is working on a partnership deal with Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, the San Jose Mercury News reports. Under the arrangement, which the Times says could be made final as early as Tuesday, Berkeley faculty members would collaborate on research and help the Saudi university hire professors.

Animal-rights advocates have escalated protests against UC Berkeley researchers in recent months, visiting their homes at midnight and even leafleting their children's soccer games. And today could be the most confrontational day yet. Protesters have been saying it will be "a day of action" against UC Berkeley faculty members who use animals for research. Advertisements found on Web sites such as Craigslist and MySpace, do not include details about the protest, and messages sent to an e-mail address in the ads were not returned. The protests, according to the listings, are being held because "40,000 nonhuman animals are currently held...

BERKELEY, Calif. — University of California officials have won the legal right to oust a band of tree-sitters who've taken up residence in an oak grove standing in the way of a planned sports center. But how do you uproot a tree-sitter in Berkeley, one of America's most politically correct cities? "Extremely difficult," acknowledges campus spokesman Dan Mogulof. As the protest nears its one-year anniversary, plenty of people have suggestions: Fire hoses, skunk spray and tranquilizer darts are among the thorny ideas Internet posters have planted. So far, the university has moved cautiously. The university wants to remove dozens of...

I can't belive it's been that long - here it is, one more time !!! >Short Version with Kick-off Only For the longer version (Elway leads a long drive to score, thinking he has won the game and will be going to his first Bowl game as a college QB): >Long Version with touchdown, then Kick-Off

UC Berkeley does not have to tear down a fence it erected around tree-sitters protesting plans to cut down an oak grove outside Memorial Stadium, an Alameda County judge ruled in advance of Saturday's nationally televised Cal football game. Siding with attorneys for the university, Judge Barbara Miller of Alameda County Superior Court said late Thursday that the fence was a safety measure and did not constitute development at the site. The tree-sitters had been marooned for hours without food or water until UC police allowed supporters to give them supplies beginning Wednesday evening. Earlier that day, the university erected...

Berkeley -- Three days before Cal's football team opens its season at home, UC Berkeley today began erecting a chain-link fence around the oak grove next to Memorial Stadium where a half-dozen tree-sitters have been roosting since December. Five to 10 protesters remain in the oak and redwood trees, where they will be surrounded by the fence. They vowed to remain in the trees as 80,000 Cal and Tennessee football fans filter past the grove Saturday to and from the 5 p.m. football game, which will be nationally televised.

San Francisco, Ca.~On Friday the NSBA's Council of Urban Boards of Education kicked off its meeting in San Francisco with an address by 1960's civil rights activist and emeritus professor at UC-Berkeley's Department of Ethnic Studies Carlos Munoz Jr. on racial harmony according to the School Board News. In speaking of American democracy, Munoz asked the audience "Will it be an emerging multiethnic, multi-racial democracy-or a neo-apartheid system of white control over a new majority of color?" and followed that by asking "Is our future destined to be one of racial and ethnic conflict that divides our nation, or will...

The authorities in Chile have arrested four people who the police say are members of one of the world's most successful groups of computer hackers. The men are accused of breaching more than 8,000 websites, including that of US space agency Nasa. One of the men, who has used the alias "Net Toxic", is alleged to be one of the most prolific hackers in the world. The men were detained in simultaneous raids in three cities in Chile, including the capital Santiago. The Chilean police carried out the operation in co-ordination with Interpol and intelligence services from the US, Israel...

Mark Foley is a scumbag! Mark Foley is a scumbag! Mark Foley is a scumbag! Now that that is out of the way I will reveal how I (and a few others) discovered Jordan Edmund was one of the former house pages that participated in sexually explicit instant messages with Rep. Mark Foley. Also I will explain to you why I believe it necessary to reveal Jordan Edmund's identity. You may not agree with my decision, but I hope to explain my reasoning by the end of this story. Read More HERE!

In another innovative move to share its intellectual treasures with the public, the University of California, Berkeley, announced today that it is delivering educational content, including course lectures and symposia, free of charge through Google Video. Because of the quality and quantity of these video offerings, UC Berkeley will be the first university with its own page on the Google Video Web site: http://video.google.com/ucberkeley , campus officials said. The campus is making more than 250 hours of content available to the public through Google Video. "Google appreciates the opportunity to partner with progressive universities like UC Berkeley to make undiscovered...

American universities rank among the best in the world, but they also boast another, more dubious distinction: They are home to some of the world’s most radical academics. Last month, one of these select individuals, UC Berkeley professor Hatem Bazian, brought his hate-filled show to two extremist Islamic Centers in South Florida. Both of these institutions are in the process of building large-scale mosques in their respective cities. And, given that their guest had previously called for attacks on the United States, the question naturally arose: Were these institutions looking to make friends in the community or to start a holy war?Past...

When most reporters cover the annual Modern Language Association national convention, they generally play it as a long feature on a fringe group of zany English professors but this approach belies the cross section of academic humanity that descends upon these annual confabs. “These days, the MLA counts more than thirty thousand members, of whom ten thousand tend to show up for the annual convention,” Gideon Lewis-Kraus writes in The Believer. “MLA membership, like academia itself, is weighted toward the East Coast, so conferences in California are not as well attended: only eighty-seven hundred professors were coming to San Diego.”...

Howard Dean, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, has canceled his appearance Saturday as the keynote speaker at the UC Berkeley Boalt Hall School of Law graduation ceremony because he does not want to cross union picket lines. The American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees Local 3299 has said it will picket any UC Berkeley commencement ceremony at which a public official or prominent politician is scheduled to speak. Several speakers, including Dean, have agreed to honor picket lines at graduation ceremonies through May 22. The union, which represents custodians, landscape maintenance workers and food service workers...

BERKELEY - Several thousand UC Berkeley graduates and their families flocked to the university's Hearst Greek Theatre for Wednesday's commencement convocation, only to have their graduation speaker leave campus rather than cross a picket line. California Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez, D-Los Angeles, declined to speak while 15 to 20 members of the union representing University of California service workers demonstrated outside the theater to protest low wages for UC custodians. "The speaker doesn't cross picket lines," said Nunez spokesman Richard Stapler. UC Chancellor Robert Birgeneau stepped up as the substitute speaker. Leaders of the American Federation of State, County and...

BERKELEY, CA—The California Patriot, Berkeley’s student-run conservative magazine, and the Berkeley College Republicans are demanding an explanation from the University of California, Berkeley, regarding a study that links childhood personality traits to political ideology. The study, which was performed by a UC Berkeley psychology professor and has been published in the Journal of Research in Personality, suggests that “whiny, insecure” children grow up to be conservatives, while “confident, resilient, self-reliant” children are more likely to become liberals, according to a recent article in The Toronto Star. The editors of The Patriot have responded with an online editorial, which states, “The...

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - Peter E. Haas Sr., an heir of Levi Strauss & Co. who helped build the jeans company into a socially conscious clothing empire, has died. He was 86. Haas died of natural causes Saturday in his San Francisco home, company spokesman Jeff Beckman said Sunday. A great-grandnephew of Levi Strauss, Haas continued the tradition of the jeans pioneer, teaming up with his older brother, Walter A. Haas Jr., to transform the small maker of Western apparel into one of the world's most famous clothing brands during his 60-year career with the company. "Throughout his career and...

Mark Danner: Blaming America for the Global JihadBy Robert SpencerFrontPageMagazine.com | October 10, 2005 The New York Times marked the fourth anniversary of 9/11 by publishing in the New York Times Magazine a long and lavish cover story by the  Mark Danner, a journalism professor at the University of California at Berkeley, author of  Torture and Truth: America, Abu Ghraib and the War on Terror, and a longtime opponent of America wars against totalitarian enemies. Danner didn’t write anything for the anniversary that would cancel dinner invitations for him in Berkeley. Instead, he repeated the radical line he has adopted for...

BERKELEY – Charles Pierce really likes playing video games. He practices piano and violin. He used to study aikido, but lately he's been more interested in taking up fencing. Lately, however, the 13-year-old has mostly been hitting the books. Charles is the youngest transfer student this fall at the University of California, Berkeley, where he's now in his junior year. His 14-year-old sister, Mayumi, also transferred in this fall as a junior. Attending UC Berkeley is a bit of a family tradition: Their parents, Wincie Pierce and Qin Ma, met and married while they were students at UC Berkeley in...

Many argue that communism will never be possible because of "human nature". The essence of this false argument is the belief that a communist society would consist of an all-powerful central government that would tell everybody what to do--and would therefore undermine the creative initiative of individuals and the search for happiness. • This argument is based on two false assumptions: (1) It assumes that a communist society will look like the former Soviet Union, or the current China, North Korea, etc (ie: corrupt police states with a feudal-style ruling class) (2) It assumes that people will only work in...

Here is the list so far for sponcers to this hate America fest: ANSWER Code Pink UFPJ NION Al Awda World Workers Party Ruckas Revolutionary Communist party Moveon.org ACORN Campus Antiwar Network International Socialist Org Greens Party Muslim Student Association CPUSA

Among the closest associates of Khomeini, there were many Communists who had conveniently grown beards. Mustafa Ali Chamran had studied in California and Egypt before he founded a Red Shi’ite secret society. His pupils included later foreign minister Ibrahim Yazdi, oil minister Mohammed Gharazi, and a Lebanese fellow student in Berkeley University, Hussein Shaikh al-Islam, who led the occupation of the US Embassy in Tehran. This occupation, shortly before the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, focused Iranian radicalism into anti-Americanism. (Taheri, p. 78 and 139-140) Mohammed Beheshti, whose death at a bombing on June 28th, 1981, remained a mystery, had resided...

I missed the fun at the Berkeley campus yesterday. Apparently students from the "Berkeley Stop the War Coalition" were there to prevent military recruiters from coming on the campus. Protest Warrior and the College Republicans were present to offer an alternative viewpoint to the "Stop the War" crowd. I would like to hear from you if you were in on the mission. If you have pictures, please post them here.

"Ending Intellectual Slavery" by Conservative author and Berkeley alumnus David Horowitz WHEN: Thursday, February 3rd TIME: 8 pm WHERE: 2050 VLSB (Map) David Horowitz will be on campus to give a speech “Ending Intellectual Slavery” which will discuss liberal indoctrination in university campuses and classrooms. Mr. Horowitz will argue that college faculty use classes as a way to inculcate their beliefs into the student population without providing the proper political balance—it will be an argument in favor of greater academic freedom. His last speech on the Berkeley campus, “The Argument Against Reparations for Slavery,” was held four years ago....

According to Sunday's S.F.Chronicle, House Democrats meet tomorrow with UC Berkeley linguistic prof George Lakoff in hopes the wordwright can correct their spin. Watch this one!!!! Lakoff is expected to advise the politician on what terminology to use. The big question is this: will the mass media follow? My money says it will. I have 40 years experience in the news media to back my bet. Need proof? The media was powerful enough to limit "choice" to one subject. That alone should be cause for watching the "watchdog." Remember when the press was called "the running dog" of the establishment?...

"On November 18, several researchers from UC Berkley released a working paper [local]. The paper alleges to present statistical evidence that, in the 2004 Presidential elections, the use of electronic voting machines in Florida gave to Bush votes that he would not have otherwise received. The finding was covered in a Wired News article. Once I correct for this shift, the "electronic voting machine effect" disappears.In response to this, I wrote a paper [html, pdf] that shows that the model used by the Berkley team is flawed. Specifically, the model fails to account for demographic shifts between 2000 and 2004....

FOR YOUR WEEKEND VIEWING PLEASUREOn Sunday, CSPAN 2 Book TV will air my speech at UC Berkely as its featured program.You can catch it at 1:15 Eastern or 9:00 PM Eastern time. I can safely say that it was the most memorable experience I've had so far in my career.Update: Great photo essay on the UC Berkely event here. (photos of the protestors posters)

Insight on the News - Features Issue: 7/22/02 The Last Word By Susan L.M. Huck Kerr: Patron Saint of Campus Radicals Ah, the folks they love to hate! On June 9, the San Francisco Chronicle published an eight-page report titled "Reagan, Hoover and the UC Red Scare." That UC is for the University of California at Berkeley; the reference to Reds who were swarming there is intended to elicit a sneer. The target here was Ronald Reagan. As an actor, Reagan had been a standard-issue liberal until, as president of the Screen Actors' Guild, he learned about the penetration and...

Hatem BazianAt LGF is a transcription of remarks made by UC Berkeley Lecturer Hatem Bazian at a "peace" rally in San Francisco on Saturday.Here is a link to a video of Bazian calling for an intifada in the US, and related videos.Are you angry? [Yeah!] Are you angry? [Yeah!] Are you angry? [Yeah!] Well, we’ve been watching intifada in Palestine, we’ve been watching an uprising in Iraq, and the question is that what are we doing? How come we don’t have an intifada in this country?Because it seem[s] to me, that we are comfortable in where we are, watching CNN,...

Fascism at BerkeleyBy Cinnamon StillwellChronwatch.com | February 16, 2004 If reaction to Daniel Pipes’ lecture on Tuesday (2/10) was any indication, fascism is alive and well at UC Berkeley. Pipes was invited by the Israel Action Committee and Berkeley Hillel to speak at the college campus known for its leftist politics. But ironically, the home of ''free speech'' and ''tolerance'' has shown itself to be distinctly intolerant to those who express political views other than their own. And Daniel Pipes happens to fit that description. Pipes is director of the Middle East Forum, a member of the U.S. Institute...

Sit-in Sentences Soon for UC TrioBy JAKOB SCHILLER (10-31-03) Following a heated five-hour sentencing hearing Tuesday, three UC Berkeley students—Michael Smith, Snehal Shingavi and Rachel Odes—are waiting to learn what, if any, punishments the university will mandate for their actions during a March 23 campus anti-war protest. After hearing proposed punishments from campus Judicial Officer Neal Rajmaira and a spirited defense from the students, a panel of professors, staff and students has one week to draw up a letter spelling out its own recommendations to Dean of Students Karen Kenney. Once the recommendations are submitted, the students will be able...

Activists Convicted of Campus Code ViolationsStudent Protesters Declare Hearing ‘Witch Hunt,’ Storm Out By SHAUNA SWEENEYContributing WriterWednesday, October 15, 2003 After abruptly walking out of their own hearing yesterday, three prominent student activists arrested in an anti-war protest last spring were found guilty of violating university code by a campus committee. Michael Smith, Rachel Odes and Snehal Shingavi, all active members of the Berkeley Stop the War Coalition, were found guilty of disturbing the peace and failing to comply with an official. Smith was also convicted for restricting and resisting a university official. However, the three students were cleared of two...

Campus Remembers Attacks By TAMI ABDOLLAH, REGINA CHEN and CATHERINE HO Contributing Writers Friday, September 12, 2003 Amid uncertainty over the conflict in Iraq, UC Berkeley students paused with the rest of the nation yesterday to remember an event that has, for many, defined a new era of U.S. foreign relations. "As the memory of Sept. 11 fades, it's still important to realize how many millions of lives were affected not only at that moment, but also those who died as a consequence of those actions," said UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert Berdahl. About 50 students, a smaller crowd than...

UC Berkeley Releases New SARS Plan, No Enrollment Bans Mentioned By Aron Ballard Contributing Writer Friday, August 22, 2003 Hoping to avoid the firestorm that erupted last spring over UC Berkeley's ban on students from SARS-affected regions, university officials released what they hope will be a more palatable plan in the event of another outbreak of SARS. The new guidelines, made public this week, are a clear break from UC Berkeley's controversial decision in May to limit summer enrollment of students from those regions. The plan calls for a swift response to any possible SARS cases in the area—actions...

Sunday, May 18, 2003 By Claudia Cowan SAN FRANCISCO — Like thousands of other conservative-minded college students across the country, some at U.C.-Berkeley (search) are waging war against what they call rampant liberalism on campuses. Their weapon: a right-leaning monthly newspaper called The California Patriot (search). “We like to be watchdogs,” said Seth Norman, the managing editor of the Patriot. In fact, more students than ever are taking their minority opinions into the public domain to balance out the messages their peers are getting in the classroom at school. From the Patriot and The Stanford Review to The Yale Free...

Date 5/2/2003 Sender Robert M. Berdahl, Chancellor To Academic Senate Faculty, All Academic Titles, Emeriti, Staff, Other Me Subject SARS Policy - Read Carefully Message To Members of the Berkeley Campus Community: The SARS task force has continued to meet and advise me on SARS related matters affecting the campus. As a result, I am now issuing updated policies and procedures. Please read this carefully and share it broadly. SARS CDC Definition Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) is an acute respiratory infection that has recently been reported in Asia, North America, and Europe. Signs and symptoms include: ** fever...

<p>The war in Iraq was initially billed as a cakewalk, the aftermath a triumphal celebration, but the Bush administration badly underestimated the difficulties of both war and peace. From Baghdad to Basra, in the past week Iraq's cities have less resembled Paris in 1944 than mayhem, "Lord of the Flies" style.</p>

<p>Captain Bill Cooper of the UC Berkeley police said today that 119 protesters have been arrested at a sit-in this afternoon in the lobby of Sproul Hall.</p> <p>Cooper said none of the protesters were charged with resisting arrest and were cited and released.</p>

Sodom and Gomorrah University Thank goodness for conservative college student journalists. They bravely blow the whistle on the cultural rot plaguing the nation's institutions of higher learning. And they alert the public to the ugly truth about campus hedonism, which is downplayed by clueless administrators, admissions flacks and faculty enablers. Just how dangerously out of control has the campus social environment become? A recent report by student journalists Seth R. Norman and Ashley Rudmann of the California Patriot (www.calpatriot.org), the conservative journal at the University of California-Berkeley, provides some hair-raising answers. According to Norman and Rudmann, anonymous gay sex seekers...

The "Star Spangled Banner" is too patriotic, divisive and political, so organizers of UC Berkeley's day-long tribute to the victims and heroes of 9-11 are excluding it. "God Bless America" is doubly excluded. Not only is it patriotic, but it also mentions God, something else that is taboo next Wednesday. The Sept. 11 Day of Remembrance, sponsored by the Chancellor's office, the student body government and the Graduate Assembly, will also feature student leaders distributing white ribbons, instead of the red, white and blue ones they had originally planned. "We thought that may be just too political, too patriotic," said...

School-sponsored 9-11 Remembrance Day to exclude patriotic symbols and religious references By Steve Sexton The "Star Spangled Banner" is too patriotic, divisive and political, so organizers of UC Berkeley's day-long tribute to the victims and heroes of 9-11 are excluding it. "God Bless America" is doubly excluded. Not only is it patriotic, but it also mentions God, something else that is taboo next Wednesday. The Sept. 11 Day of Remembrance, sponsored by the Chancellor's office, the student body government and the Graduate Assembly, will also feature student leaders distributing white ribbons, instead of the red, white and blue ones they...

Conservatives need not apply In our March issue, we reported in this space on some for-credit courses on offer at the University of California at Berkeley. There was a course in Blackjack, for students who hadn’t yet learned how to handle cards, and “Copwatch,” an important scholarly offering that, according to one description, advises students “how to safely and effectively assert their rights when interacting with the police.” The pièce de résistance, however, was a women’s studies course in male sexuality in which students visited strip clubs, wrote papers about their sexual fantasies, and watched an instructor having sex. Well,...

<p>America’s campuses are supposed to be places where ideas can be discussed openly and freely.</p> <p>Most Americans by now realize that the key word in the previous sentence is "supposed." But a recent event at San Francisco State University — and the way the university responds to it — may be pivotal in determining whether it will remain possible to take the academic claim to foster a diversity of ideas seriously any more.</p>

UC Berkeley administrators are reviewing how an English course focusing on the plight of Palestinians received approval for next fall even though it discourages conservative students from enrolling. The English R1A reading and comprehension course, titled "The Politics and Poetics of Palestinian Resistance," states in its course description that "conservative thinkers are encouraged to seek other sections"—a violation of the university's Faculty Code of Conduct. According to the course description, the class "takes as its starting point the right of Palestinians to fight for their own self-determination." "The brutal Israeli military occupation of Palestine, an occupation that has been ongoing...