Free Republic

One play. Five yards. A flag that wasn’t thrown. Seven years ago at the Super Bowl, history was made when a 49ers receiver, unable to break free from the prying hands of a harassing cornerback, could not grab a pass on fourth-and-goal that would have given San Francisco the go-ahead score late in the game against the Baltimore Ravens. The Niners lost that game 34-31 and were relegated to the forgettable list of very good NFL teams who came in second place. For the man who threw that pass, Colin Kaepernick, things have never been the same. The same could...

At around 2:25 p.m. on March 30,1981 President Ronald Reagan was shot as he exited the Washington Hilton Hotel. A volley of shots rang out from the press area where 25 year-old John Hinckley Jr., who had gotten to within 15 feet of the President, was holding a .22 caliber pistol. Hinckley shot not only President Reagan, but a Washington police officer, a Secret Service agent who put himself in the line of fire to protect the President, and White House Press Secretary James Brady, who was shot in the head. A Secret Service agent pushed Reagan into a limosuine...

On Wednesday, January 18, I received an e-mail from someone identifying himself as “Ahmed.” He wrote to me that he was a “Muslim activist” and that he wanted me to come on his radio show to discuss my work, or, in his words, “to give [my] side of the story.” In doing a simple web search on his e-mail address, it turned out that this individual was none other than the Director of Communications for the Chicago chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), Ahmed Rehab. While I didn’t know his motives in contacting me, I had recalled when...

Black History Course Mandated for Philadelphia Schools By Monisha Bansal CNSNews.com Correspondent June 13, 2005 CNSNews.com) - The Philadelphia public school system, citing the fact that blacks encompass two-thirds of its student population, will require all students to take an African-American history course starting in September. But a conservative critic calls the decision divisive and claims Philadelphia parents "are sacrificing their children to a bunch of America-hating black liberals." Joe Lyons, spokesperson for the School District of Philadelphia, said there has been a public outcry since the 1960s "to include more emphasis on African-American history and culture in our curriculum."...

When I recently had the pleasure of meeting Dr. Jay Bergman of Central Connecticut State University (CCSU), I couldn’t help but wonder, what’s a nice guy like this doing teaching in a school like that? When he complained in a letter to the local newspaper about the lack of intellectual diversity at CCSU, he cited as an example the day-long forum on slavery reparations in the United States held by the African Studies Program (ASP). Dr. Bergman pointed out that the same department was entirely mute on the subject of the enslavement of Africans by Africans taking place to this...

<p>African-American studies programs are intended to give students an unbiased opportunity to learn and celebrate the history and culture of blacks in America, but critics say courses too often are filled with a leftist political slant that taints the teachings.</p>

In a word, I gave up African studies because I found it depressing. But that is hardly an explanation, even if it is an emotionally precise description of what occurred. To explain my giving up African studies I have to say why I came to find the activity depressing. This requires a little history - both personal history, or autobiography, and history of Africa. I began to be interested in Africa whilst an undergraduate student of economics and politics at Sheffield university (1965-8) and I began my doctoral work in African politics in Oxford in 1969. That means that I...

fter a year of turmoil that saw two of its biggest stars defect to Princeton University, Harvard's celebrated Afro-American studies department will be refocused and expanded to include an African language program and a new major in African studies, the chairman of the department, Henry Louis Gates Jr., said yesterday. Professor Gates, who at one point was so unhappy about the acrimony between his department and the Harvard president, Lawrence H. Summers, that he too weighed offers to leave, said he had appointed five new faculty members, including two African scholars, one a critic of African literature and one a...

Cornel West Scams Princeton It's lucky for Cornel West that the Ivy League apparently has no shortage of universities willing to abandon academic standards in return for the dubious advantage of employing a publicity-loving con man. The latest dupe: Princeton University, which has just hired the black studies "scholar" away from Harvard University. Princeton is crowing about its "coup"; Harvard does not seem particularly distressed.And no wonder. Unable to quit with dignity or decency, Mr. West used his decision to leave Harvard to inflate his public profile by attacking Harvard president Lawrence Summers. What was Mr. Summer's crime? Last fall,...