Free Republic

WASHINGTON - The Trump administration is considering new background checks and other restrictions on Chinese students in the United States over growing espionage concerns, U.S. officials and congressional sources said. In June, the U.S. State Department shortened the length of visas for Chinese graduate students studying aviation, robotics and advanced manufacturing to one year from five. U.S. officials said the goal was to curb the risk of spying and theft of intellectual property in areas vital to national security. But now the Trump administration is weighing whether to subject Chinese students to additional vetting before they attend a U.S. school....

A University of California, Berkeley professor suggested scrapping end-of-semester student evaluations for hiring, promotion, and tenure decisions after claiming that the grades and evaluations are biased against female instructors and people of color. “Over the next few weeks, students will get the chance to evaluate their professors and TAs. They’re going to get it wrong,” UC Berkeley history professor Brian DeLaytweeted on Sunday. “They’ll be harder on women and people of color than on white men. Tenured white male faculty, in particular, should help their students understand this.”

The College of the Holy Cross canceled classes Friday afternoon at the College of the Holy Cross in response to an alleged anti-gay assault that occurred on campus. The alleged hate crime was reported in the early hours of Oct. 27, but the college has refused to release any other details regarding the incident, the Worcester Telegram reported. The sexes of both the alleged perpetrator and victim are unknown, as well as if the victim was injured. Holy Cross campus police did not file any formal charges or make any arrests, according to the Worcester District Attorney’s Office. A Worcester...

“The Vagina Monologues” used to be celebrated as a subversive blow against patriarchy, or something. Now it’s just viewed as another invalidation of transgender lives. The Women’s Resource Center at Eastern Michigan University is pulling the plug on productions, claiming it can’t legally alter the script created by Eve Ensler, MLive reports:

A white professor at the University of Texas at San Antonio has come under fire allegedly calling the police on a black student for putting her feet up on a chair. Biology professor Anita Mos is now under investigation for potential discrimination after footage of her kicking Paige Burgess out of her Anatomy & Physiology class on Monday, went viral. The video, filmed by a classmate, showed the moment three campus officers arrived at the classroom. Moss then directed them towards Burgess who stood up, and was escorted out.

In 2011, the Obama administration told universities to implement judicial policies that benefited students who accuse peers of sexual assault. This guidance stripped away most of the due process rights for the accused, throwing their basic constitutional protections out the window in favor of believe-the-survivor procedures within Title IX campus tribunals. Last year, under the Trump administration, the Department of Education rescinded Obama’s regulatory guidance — but the damage has already been done. Six years’ worth of dismal due process rights for the accused has led to hundreds of young men fighting sexual assault claim allegations in court. Even more...

A coalition of liberal student organizations has condemned California State-Long Beach President Jane Close Conoley and her administration for allowing an event hosted by the school’s Turning Point USA group. On October 23, TPUSA hosted conservative pundits Charlie Kirk and Candace Owens who were greeted by some 200 demonstrators protesting outside the venue. The activists chanted phrases such as “Go home, fascists” and “Say it loud, say it clear, immigrants are welcome here.”

What is the telos––the purpose, end, or goal––of the university? In a thought-provoking 2016 lecture, the social psychologist Jonathan Haidt argued that the answer ought to be “truth,” but that lately, more of America’s top universities are embracing social justice as a second or alternative telos. While acknowledging that those goals are not always at odds, he argued that “the conflict between truth and social justice is likely to become unmanageable,” and he urged academia to affirm the primacy of truth-seeking. A recent essay in The Chronicle of Higher Education recognizes the same conflict, but implies that it sometimes ought...

A Catholic university recently cancelled classes for the day in order to address the alleged problem of racism on its campus, with the school also bringing in a professor from California “who focuses on diversity and inclusion” in order to speak to the students this week. The University of St. Thomas, a Catholic school in St. Paul, Minnesota, gave students the day off of classwork as part of its plan to “[take] action after a racist message was recently written on a student’s door,” KSTP reports.

If you teach classes at Cornell University that “take class, race, ethnicity, nativity status, religion, gender, sexuality, or ability as an object of study,” consider your job secure. The Ivy League school’s College of Arts and Sciences just approved new graduation requirements that will force students to take classes in these fields, dubbed “social difference,” The Cornell Daily Sun reports.

The University of Minnesota is a little bit more fair to men now, thanks to a Title IX complaint by a professor who doesn’t even teach there. Mark Perry of the University of Michigan-Flint, also a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, shared a letter he received from UMinn’s Office of Equal Opportunity and Affirmative Action Wednesday.

A student writer at The Harvard Crimson recently declared that Harvard has a ‘kindness problem,’ and that students there need to “be nicer” and start exhibiting basic manners. Before coming to Harvard, “I assumed training through boarding schools, country clubs, and cotillions would produce well-mannered undergrads,” senior Jenna Gray writes at The Crimson.

An elite private college in Southern California is facing a unique health and hygiene problem — “plastic bags filled with urine” are being thrown away in hallway dorm trashcans. What’s more, “some students had even urinated into bins located within the residence hall, rather than bothering to use the lavatory facilities,” reports the Claremont Independent. The problem is centered at Walker Hall at Pomona College, a private institution nestled near the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains, that costs $70,000 a year in tuition and fees to attend.

Augustana College held an event on Monday to discuss cultural appropriation, asking them to "sign a pledge promising not to appropriate any culture." The Office of Student Inclusion and Diversity at the Illinois school held an event at The Gerber Center for Student Life titled, “There's No Costume in Culture,” inviting students to raise their awareness of cultural appropriation on college campuses and its social consequences.

NYU student Senator-at-Large Rose Asaf tweeted that student senators would propose a Boycott, Divest, and Sanction resolution (BDS) against the state of Israel at the university senate meeting on Nov. 1. This proposal comes on the heels of a resolution, passed last semester, which urged the university to “review its nondiscrimination policies for Palestinian, Middle Eastern, and other affected students traveling to the State of Israel and attending NYU Tel Aviv,” according to NYU Local. The final vote on the resolution is scheduled for Dec. 6 and votes will be cast anonymously, with only NYU students permitted to attend. During...

A student op-ed recently argued that the concept of virginity—the state of not having engaged in sexual intercourse—“doesn’t even exist,” that it is “made up” and that “sex should be defined by the individuals.” “Over time I’ve come to realize that virginity doesn’t even exist; by definition, it refers to the first time someone has sex, but sex can mean different things to different people,” Anabel Costa writes in The Daily Nexus, the student newspaper of the University of California, Santa Barbara.

A student at a Catholic university was called into a meeting with the school’s Title IX coordinator this week after speaking out against the university’s cross-dressing drag shows, claiming that they represent “an assault on the dignity of the human person and the divine gift of ordered sexuality.” In his column in The Carroll News, Declan Leary said the Jesuit-run John Carroll University was providing “deviant entertainment” for “misguided young people” by sponsoring the annual event where men dress as women.

The University of Maryland’s Department of Resident Life is piloting a program this year which has placed “multicultural advocates” in selected dormitories to — you guessed it — “promote campus diversity and inclusion efforts.” Though these advocates don’t live in the dorms as resident assistants do, they do hold office hours there and lead “dialogue sessions” about diversity, The Diamondback reports.

The president of a university students' union has been criticised for saying a mural in memory of First World War soldiers should be 'painted over' because it displays only 'white men'. Emily Dawes, the head of the University of Southampton Students' Union, provoked outrage when she referred to the university's Rotherstein Mural as a 'mural of white men' and called for it to be taken down. She tweeted: 'Mark my words - we're taking down the mural of white men in the uni Senate room, even if I have to paint over it myself.' Both she and the students' union...

At a “Free Vibrator Day” event hosted at San Diego State University on Tuesday hundreds of the battery-powered sex toys were distributed to students who had lined up for the complimentary devices. The event was held in the Pride Suite of SDSU’s Aztec Student Union, with a line of students — mostly females — flanking the side of the building and a student organizer calling out “destigmatize masturbation” to passersby.