Free Republic

SPOKANE, Wash. (AP) — Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin attended five colleges in six years before graduating from the University of Idaho in 1987. Federal privacy laws prohibit the schools from disclosing her grades, and none of the schools contacted by The Associated Press could say why she transferred. There was no indication any of them were contacted as part of the background investigation of Palin by presidential candidate John McCain's campaign. "Our office was not contacted by anyone," said Tania Thompson, spokeswoman for the University of Idaho in Moscow. Palin, the governor of Alaska, was born in Idaho....

Islam is using the ideological approach to acculturate its belief system into main stream America. Of course, like most ideologies, Islam is using America’s public schools as its springboard for indoctrinating America’s children. By introducing Islam to students in their mandated curriculums, the next generation of Americans could possibly be pro-Islam in their belief system. However, since Islam is a religion and a political ideology, why is the United States government permitting this indoctrination to occur in America’s public schools? Even though some people promote the idea of the separation of church and state in America, the concept is not...

The Nebraska Legislature approved in-state tuition for illegal aliens in 2006. The University of Nebraska reported that about 3 dozen students participated in the program last year. According to the msm and the University everything is great, of course the students "fear" of deportation distracts them from getting straight-As. Does anyone have research or results from other states on how these programs have worked?

It's springtime, and all God's creatures are ready for mating, but psychobabble killjoys are warning: Don't have kids. They'll make you miserable, and you'll deserve taxation for environmental abuse. On May 8, just as the songbirds were readying nests for their offspring, a Harvard professor tried to put a damper on the joys of human procreation by declaring that having children strips happiness from their parents. Professor Daniel Gilbert announced to the Happiness and its Causes conference in Sydney, Australia, that with each child the barometer of happiness plummets.

College students and their families are rightly outraged about the bankrupting costs of textbooks that have nearly tripled since the 1980s, mainly because of marginally useful CD-ROMs and other supplements. A bill pending in Congress would require publishers to sell “unbundled” versions of the books — minus the pricey add-ons. Even more important, it would require publishers to reveal book prices in marketing material so that professors could choose less-expensive titles. The bill is a good first step. But colleges and universities will need to embrace new methods of textbook development and distribution if they want to rein in runaway...

A closed meeting called by the Higher Education Funding Council for England (Hefce) about Islamic studies will take place today amid fears that Saudi and Muslim organisations exert too much influence over UK universities as a result of donations that dwarf government funding. Private donations, mostly to Islamic study centres, are much greater than government funding for Islamic studies and academics are said to be nervous of the threat to their academic freedom. The conference will discuss how to improve Islamic studies in UK universities after the government earmarked £1m in funding following the publication of Dr Ataullah Siddiqui's report...

If your kid comes home from college one day and tells you that your Christian faith is stupid, welcome to the world in which I live. The college environment does that to our kids. It makes good Christian students stupid. By that I mean it turns them into liberals, atheists, or both. Three out of four Christian kids (that’s 75% for those of you who attend UNC-Wilmington) abandon the church when they go to college and only about a third of them return by age 30. In other words, most stay stuck on stupid. Christians and conservatives could simply whine...

Kingdom Come [Kathryn Jean Lopez] From the Arab News: Al-JOUF, 10 April 2008 — US Ambassador Ford Fraker said in Sakaka that his country aims to double the number of student visas issued to Saudis. “Currently there are 15,000 Saudi students in the US,” he said during an event on Sunday with local business leaders to an audience at the Al-Jouf Chamber of Commerce and Industry. “We aim to increase their numbers to 30,000 over the next five years.” Fraker said Saudi Arabia should bolster its English-language programs because it is generally required for Saudis seeking to pursue higher studies...

USC is eliminating the study of German as a major over the next three years and dismantling the department except for some basic language courses, officials said. Faculty and students are protesting the move, saying it will harm the university's national reputation for scholarship. The German department at the Los Angeles campus is relatively small, with three full-time professors, three lecturers, 10 undergraduate majors and 10 minors, said its chairman, Gerhard Clausing. He said the university has starved the department of funds and new hires in recent years and is now making a serious mistake in reducing it further.

Can the blogosphere [And Freerepublic] really do things big media can’t? Let’s find out. I have a project I think is perfect for just the sort of folks who read The Corner and other political blogs. This project is way too big for me to do all by myself. What’s needed to make it work is an informal alliance of local bloggers, student newspapers, and concerned citizens across the country. Through Freedom of Information Act requests and discussions with officials at the Department of Education, I recently obtained a comprehensive list of large gifts to American universities originating in foreign...

This is the state of our academia today. If you're conservative then you must be shouted down, not allowed to speak, rush the stage or throw pies in your face. Former top Bush aide Karl Rove didn’t get the friendliest of receptions at the University of Iowa Sunday, CNN affiliate KCRG reports. Rove, who was paid $40,000 to speak at the University, was confronted with an at-times hostile crowd of 1,000, and was interrupted on several occasions.At one point during the speech, Rove reportedly lashed out at some of the students, saying, “You got a chance to ask your questions...

One expert said some productions made by the terror group were 'good enough to put on the Discovery Channel' PESHAWAR, PAKISTAN In an Internet age, al-Qaeda prizes geek jihadis as much as would-be suicide bombers and gunmen. The terror network is recruiting computer-savvy technicians to produce sophisticated Web documentaries and multimedia products aimed at Muslim audiences in the US, Britain and other Western countries. Already, the terror movement's al-Sahab production company is turning out high quality material, some of which rivals productions by Western media companies. The documentaries appear regularly on Islamist Web sites, which al-Qaeda uses to recruit followers...

MUSLIM university students want lectures to be rescheduled to fit in with prayer timetables and separate male and female eating and recreational areas established on Australian campuses. International Muslim students, predominantly from Saudi Arabia, have asked universities in Melbourne to change class times so they can attend congregational prayers. They also want a female-only area for Muslim students to eat and relax. But at least one institution has rejected their demands, arguing that the university is secular and it does not want to set a precedent for requests granted in the name of religious beliefs. La Trobe University International chief...

MUSLIM university students want lectures to be rescheduled to fit in with prayer timetables and separate male and female eating and recreational areas established on Australian campuses. International Muslim students, predominantly from Saudi Arabia, have asked universities in Melbourne to change class times so they can attend congregational prayers. They also want a female-only area for Muslim students to eat and relax. But at least one institution has rejected their demands, arguing that the university is secular and it does not want to set a precedent for requests granted in the name of religious beliefs. La Trobe University International chief...

Wafaa Bilal, video artist West Hall Auditorium, RPI Campus, Mar 5 2008 7:00PM The Department of the Arts / iEAR Presents! at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute will feature the work of Iraqi-born video artist Wafaa Bilal. The opening of “Virtual Jihadi” and Bilal’s lecture will be March 5, 2008 in the West Hall Auditorium of the RPI Campus in Troy, NY. The exhibit opens at 7:00 p.m., and the lecture is at 7:30 p.m. A reception with the artist will follow. Refreshments will be served. The event is free and open to the public. For directions or more information, please visit...

DOHA, Qatar — On a hot October evening, hundreds of families flocked to the sumptuous Ritz Carlton here in this Persian Gulf capital for an unusual college fair, the Education City roadshow. Qataris, Bangladeshis, Syrians, Indians, Egyptians — in saris, in suits, in dishdashis, in jeans — came to hear what it takes to win admission to one of the five American universities that offer degrees at Education City, a 2,500-acre campus on the outskirts of Doha where oil and gas money pays for everything from adventurous architecture to professors’ salaries. Education City, the largest enclave of American universities overseas,...

For those who feel they missed out on an Ivy League education, there's this: The University of Maryland is bringing leading professors from Harvard, Yale and other top schools to teach classes, and students won't need SAT scores or prerequisites to get in. With an eye on the booming boomer interest in lifelong education, U-Md. officials are announcing a partnership today that will marry talent from the country's best-known schools with the university's own. Professors will lead a day of seminars March 29 geared toward alumni and local residents long out of school, officials said. Excerpt

The Five Most Expensive Colleges * George Washington University * Kenyon College * Bucknell University * Vassar College * Sarah Lawrence College This may surprise you: The world’s most expensive universities are not haute institutions in the Swiss Alps or on the balmy shores of the Persian Gulf. Nor are they the Ivy League citadels of America’s elite like Harvard or Princeton, or ancient halls of learning like Cambridge or Oxford in the United Kingdom. No, according to The Chronicle of Higher Education, the most expensive four-year university in the U.S. (and most likely the world) is Washington, D.C.’s George...

Common Learning Agenda Blues by: Malcolm A. Kline, January 08, 2008 Those who argue that colleges and universities lack standards may be incorrect but only technically. “Under the current curriculum guidelines, students must take four humanities and two social science classes that could include history and political science,” Bucknell’s Nick Mozal writes of that Pennsylvania university’s “Common Learning Agenda.” “However, there is no course requirement to teach students the core history and cultural heritage of the United States.” “Students have difficulty even finding such a course.” Mozal presides over the Bucknell University Conservatives Club, which publishes The Counterweight newspaper, in...

Almost all of the HBCUs were created at a time when Southern blacks were excluded from other schools (only four of the HBCUs are outside the South). They turned out doctors, lawyers, ministers and politicians. W.E.B. Du Bois graduated from Fisk in 1888, Thurgood Marshall from Lincoln (Chester County, Pa.) in 1930, and Martin Luther King Jr. from Morehouse (Atlanta) in 1948. ...In fact, a remarkable 40% of all African-Americans with a bachelor's degree in the physical sciences, and 38% of those who majored in math or the biological sciences, attended HBCUs. Conversely, almost no students at HBCUs gravitate to...

The Academy Fails Again By Lori Lowenthal Marcus When professors hijack their students' efforts to suit their own political agendas, and the students' agenda is obliterated by a professor's implied directive, and a university blames the entire mess on the students, what do you have? The University of Delaware. A close examination of recent events there reveals the leadership's dismal failure to capitalize on positive, mature efforts by students, and to instead hoist them in front of the firing line. In late September some University of Delaware students chose not to participate in the official country-wide Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week. Instead,...

Zimbabwe's education system, once regarded as among the best in Africa, is in crisis because of the country's economic meltdown. Almost a quarter of the teachers have quit the country, absenteeism is high, buildings are crumbling and standards plummeting. In one of the most shocking examples of the Dickensian conditions, a reporter witnessed hundreds of children...writing in the dust on the floor because they had no exercise books or pencils. "Starting this term, we are supposed to buy our own teaching materials," ... "With our paltry salaries I don't see it working. We will just sit in the classes." Absenteeism...

MC LEAN, Va., Nov. 14 /Standard Newswire/ -- Today the Fred Thompson campaign announced its Students For Fred National and State Leadership Teams. These student volunteers will be actively leading the Fred Thompson grassroots efforts on college campuses across the nation. Matthew Farrar will serve as the Florida Chairman as well as a National Co-Chair of Students for Fred Thompson. A senior political science major at Florida State University, Farrar has previously served on the 2006 Charlie Crist Gubernatorial campaigns and has worked on numerous state races throughout Florida. "Sen. Fred Thompson has made it clear that he is the...

Nation: FBI and Universities Unite to Fight Terror Nov-07-2007, Morning Edition Morning Edition, November 7, 2007 · The FBI is concerned that the open environment at U.S. universities makes it child's play for political or corporate spies to steal U.S. research. The relationship between the FBI and universities has traditionally been strained, but the fight against terrorism creates new bedfellows.

This will be interesting, a documentary movie by Ben Stein on the new wave of thought police and academic suppression in academia and science: Ben Stein, in the new film EXPELLED: No Intelligence Allowed His heroic and, at times, shocking journey confronting the world’s top scientists, educators and philosophers, regarding the persecution of the many by an elite few. In theatres near you, starting February 2008 Ben travels the world on his quest, and learns an awe-inspiring truth…that bewilders him, then angers him…and then spurs him to action! Ben realizes that he has been “Expelled,” and that educators and scientists...

The email below, which is circulating among academics, solicits contributions for a full-page ad in the New York Times by the Ad Hoc Committee to Defend the University to attack external critics of academe in the "newspaper of record." (Inquiring readers will want to know: will the Times cut them a deal the way they did Moveon.org? Same politics, same "worthy cause." Stay tuned.) If you sign the petition and they raise enough money, you can get your name in the paper! Cool. And you won't have to die first or commit a crime. The Ad Hocs are upset--terribly so--that...

FIRE Press Release NEWARK, Del., October 30, 2007—The University of Delaware subjects students in its residence halls to a shocking program of ideological reeducation that is referred to in the university’s own materials as a “treatment” for students’ incorrect attitudes and beliefs. The Orwellian program requires the approximately 7,000 students in Delaware’s residence halls to adopt highly specific university-approved views on issues ranging from politics to race, sexuality, sociology, moral philosophy, and environmentalism. The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) is calling for the total dismantling of the program, which is a flagrant violation of students’ rights to freedom...

Steven Colbert recently had a segment on college rankings. Colbert expressed disappointment that his alma mater, Dartmouth, did not rank well in the Washington Monthly rankings of college effectiveness. Washington Monthly focuses on the graduation rates of low-income students. Colbert complained that Dartmouth has plenty of social mobility, as you could enter a plutocrat and graduate an oligarch. Despite the lighthearted treatment, a serious issue surrounds the issue of the perverse incentives created by the U.S. News and World Report (USNWR) rankings. Inputs dominate the USNWR rankings--how much money the universities have, and the SAT scores of incoming students, etc....

Global warming lecture at CSUF stirs controversy Science weighs against philosophy on campus By: Sylvia Masuda Issue date: 10/18/07 Section: News Posted: 10/18/07 Controversy erupted in the Cal State Fullerton science community over Tuesday's global warming lecture in the Titan Theater. Research professor and climatologist Patrick Michaels presented "Reducing the Effects of Global Warming in Southern California," a presentation which explained why global warming is not an imminent problem. The Economics Association organized the event. Over the years, science organizations have criticized Michaels for exaggerating his credentials and for pushing what they feel is a political agenda. CSUF science...

he average taxpayer and parents who foot the bill know little about the rot on many college campuses. "Indoctrinate U" is a recently released documentary, written and directed by Evan Coyne Maloney, that captures the tip of a disgusting iceberg. The trailer for "Indoctrinate U" can be seen here. "Indoctrinate U" starts out with an interview of Professor David Clemens, at Monterey Peninsula College, who reads an administrative directive regarding new course proposals: "Include a description of how course topics are treated to develop a knowledge and understanding of race, class, and gender issues." Clemens is fighting the directive, which...

Indoctrinate U”’s thesis is contained in its title. You may think that universities are places where ideas are explored and evaluated in a spirit of objective inquiry. But in fact, Maloney tells us, they are places of indoctrination where a left-leaning faculty teaches every subject, including chemistry and horticulture, through the prism of race, class and gender; where minorities and women are taught that they are victims of oppression; where admissions policies are racially gerrymandered; where identity-based programs reproduce the patterns of segregation that the left supposedly abhors; where students and faculty who speak against the prevailing orthodoxy are ostracized,...

George Will takes a look at the requirements for today's students of social work -- and discovers a political commissariat worthy of the Soviet Union. Universities have required pledges of loyalty to liberal political thought as a requisite for success in their social-work programs, failing students who object to being told what to think (via CapQ reader Sandeep Dath): In 1997, the National Association of Social Workers (NASW) adopted a surreptitious political agenda in the form of a new code of ethics, enjoining social workers to advocate for social justice "from local to global levels." A widely used textbook --...

The growth in research meant to protect the U.S. from bioterrorism is overwhelming the oversight system, a House panel is told. WASHINGTON -- Rapid growth in the number of biodefense laboratories researching deadly pathogens has overwhelmed the government's ability to adequately monitor the program, federal investigators told Congress on Thursday. Officials said the expansion of the program over the last few years, coupled with a lack of training of lab workers and poor reporting of lab accidents, posed a potential threat to national security and public health. *** It was the first time Congress had held a hearing on the...

The key word in the latest guidance offered to today’s students is “ignore.” Is it blatant, brazen or both to call for the use of ignorance to gain or retain knowledge? It is no secret that every deadly ideology of the past had to ignore the truth about a lot of things including itself for its survival and proliferation. Ignoring a message usually gives way to ignoring, abusing and then killing the messenger. History is replete with examples from both the ancient and the modern world.

Until an Israeli protest induced a revision in the rules, a U.S. State Department-funded University of California business training program for residents of the Middle East specifically excluded Jews. Charlotte Tan, spokesman for the university defended the exclusion saying that “training Jews in business would be like ‘preaching to the choir.’ They already know how to make money.”

Washington, DC, Oct. 3, 2007 (CWNews.com) - The Virginia-based Cardinal Newman Society has announced publication of a new comprehensive guide for Catholic students and parents selecting a college. The culmination of two years of research and interviews, The Newman Guide to Choosing a Catholic College recommends 21 Catholic colleges and universities in the US and Canada that "faithfully live their Catholic identity and provide a quality undergraduate education." The Newman Guide, edited by Joseph Esposito, the Cardinal Newman Society’s director of research, puts its stamp of approval on schools ranging from Mount St. Mary’s University in Emmitsburg, Maryland-- the second-oldest...

Somewhere in the early to mid ‘70s, nuns from most of the older religious communities replaced their habits with pants suits, left their convents for apartments, and gave up teaching and hospital work to lead retreats and give workshops. At exactly the same time they also stopped getting vocations and their numbers began to drop considerably - so much so, that each year parishes are solicited by the USCCB to contribute to what’s known as the “Retirement Fund for Religious,” made necessary by the fact that all the members of the old established communities of women religious are now old....

September 13, 2007, 5:00 a.m. Ignorance of IslamUniversities are derelict in their duty of making students into knowledgeable citizens. By Travis Kavulla I was in Cambridge, Mass., in February of last year when I heard the latest from Iraq: The al-Askari Mosque, the so-called “Golden Mosque� of Samarra, had been nearly leveled in a devastating explosion. That night, I attended a regular, rather casual seminar on the works of Cantabrigian authors, led by a prodigious member of Harvard’s Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations department. The professor arrived late to class, and was not in the mood to talk about...

First, it isn’t true that the economy is undergoing some dramatic shift to “knowledge work” that can only be performed by people who have college educations. When we hear that more and more jobs “require” a college degree, that isn’t because most of them are so technically demanding that an intelligent high school graduate couldn’t learn to do the work. Rather, what it means is that more employers are using educational credentials as a screening mechanism. As James Engell and Anthony Dangerfield write in their book Saving Higher Education in the Age of Money, “the United States has become the...

When Emily McLain decided to enroll at the University of Oregon, a significant part of the appeal was low tuition. She had not counted on all the fees that unexpectedly appeared on her bill. “I had my dad calling me asking, ‘What’s this for?’ ” said Ms. McLain, 22, a political science and international studies major now entering her last year at the university. This year, the university is charging a $51 “energy surcharge” for rising electricity costs. A $270 “technology fee” for computer service. There is the $371.25 fee for campus health center, $135 fee to maintain buildings and...

HALAL food and prayer rooms should be adopted at all universities to help Muslim students meet their religious and educational obligations, a conference heard yesterday. The religious needs of Muslim university students were addressed at an inaugural conference launched by the University of Western Sydney. UWS Director of Equity and Diversity Dr Sev Ozdowski said they wanted to develop national standards for Muslim students which could be incorporated by other universities. The "Access, Inclusion and Success - Muslim students at Australian universities" two-day conference is covering issues relating to gender, discrimination and how to meet the fundamental religious needs of...

AUSTIN — Gov. Rick Perry's campaign Web site touts public education as a long-standing "top priority" of his, but the school year began this week with teachers and administrators still wondering who will be the next commissioner of education. That question mark is one among many with nearly 400 expired gubernatorial appointments this year alone to state boards, commissions and universities. Senators — worried that Perry is dodging their constitutional role of confirming most gubernatorial appointments — are crying foul. By Friday, 388 of Perry's appointments will have already expired so far this year, but only one in eight have...

(CNSNews.com) - Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama received about $1.5 million in contributions this year from college professors and others in the education field, outpacing the party's front-runner, Sen. Hillary Clinton, who got $940,000 from academics. Still, Clinton's near-$1-million second-place finish was almost as much as academia's total combined donations to leading Republican candidates Mitt Romney, Rudy Giuliani and John McCain. (See Complete Candidate Breakdown) That many college professors and academics lean to the political left is no surprise -- 76 percent of their donations went to Democratic candidates in the first two quarters of 2007. But the volume...

Fabrizio Costantini for The New York Times A footbath has been installed in a corner of a unisex restroom at the student center at Eastern Michigan University in Ypsilanti. The University of Michigan-Dearborn has installed footbaths in an effort to accommodate Muslim students. DEARBORN, Mich. — When pools of water began accumulating on the floor in some restrooms at the University of Michigan-Dearborn, and the sinks pulling away from the walls, ... some were washing their feet in the sinks. ...the university announced that it would install $25,000 foot-washing stations in several restrooms. ...it created instant controversy, with bloggers...

There are many natural scientists, and especially physicists, who continue to reject the notion that the disciplines concerned with social and cultural criticism can have anything to contribute, except perhaps peripherally, to their research. Still less are they receptive to the idea that the very foundations of their worldview must be revised or rebuilt in the light of such criticism. Rather, they cling to the dogma imposed by the long post-Enlightenment hegemony over the Western intellectual outlook, which can be summarized briefly as follows: that there exists an external world, whose properties are independent of any individual human being and...

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) is making waves with a planned amendment to the Higher Education Reauthorization Act being introduced in time for the next school year. Reid's amendment holds select educational funds hostage for US colleges and universities that do not meet a set of criteria meant to bolster the war on file-sharing on college campuses. This is the legislative carrot-and-stick move that many colleges have feared would arise. The amendment would essentially put US colleges in the business of aggressively policing copyright on their network in order to stay off of a "blacklist" that would be comprised...

YELLOW SPRINGS, Ohio, June 22 — The messages have been flying through alumni chat rooms, sometimes 10 a minute, ever since Antioch University announced that it was closing, at least for now, the undergraduate college that once seemed the very symbol of the 1960s. A new curriculum program, intended to save money and shrink the faculty by abolishing majors and developing areas of concentration instead, projected that 190 new students would enter Antioch last September; instead 63 showed up. This year the college had 125 acceptances for September, but it was still not enough. The school is to be shut...

Updated: 6:01 p.m. CT June 10, 2007 CHICAGO - A DePaul University professor who has accused some Jews of improperly using the legacy of the Holocaust to get compensation payments has been denied tenure after a drawn-out public fight. Norman Finkelstein, whose work led to a long-running public feud with a Harvard law professor and lawyer famous for representing O.J. Simpson, said he was disappointed by the faculty panel’s 4-3 decision. “They can deny me tenure, deny me the right to teach,” the 53-year-old told the Chicago Sun-Times. “But they will never stop me from saying what I believe.” Finkelstein’s...

What do Columbia, Vanderbilt, Duke and UCLA have in common? Apparently, leaders in Congress think they aren't expelling enough students for illegally swapping music and movies. The House committees responsible for copyright and education wrote a joint letter May 1 scolding the presidents of 19 major American universities, demanding that each school respond to a six-page questionnaire detailing steps it has taken to curtail illegal music and movie file-sharing on campus. One of the questions - "Does your institution expel violating students?" - shows just how out-of-control the futile battle against campus downloading has become.

Colorado's public colleges and universities face a "severe" funding crisis for campus buildings, according to a report released Thursday by state officials. The state's colleges and universities will need as much as $3 billion in funding to build, repair and replace campus buildings over the next five years. During the 2007-08 fiscal year, which begins July 1, higher education will get $142.3 million for projects - nearly double what it got in the previous year. "Clearly this indicates the success of higher education in receiving capital funding this year," according to a report delivered Thursday to the Colorado Commission on...