Free Republic

Want to get extra credit in your Asian Studies class? It’s easy enough: hate Israel enough to protest its existence. “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” Boom. Get a better grade! No, I am not kidding. Gavin Newsom, maybe you should come home from China and clean up your home state..@UCBerkeley is offering extra credit points to students for taking part in an anti-Israel protest. https://t.co/5jPWo37ncV— Chaya Raichik (@ChayaRaichik10) October 25, 2023You can’t make this s**t up.There are so many things wrong with this, most of which are self-evident. A state university that promotes propaganda that...

A pro-Palestine group that has been designated as anti-Semitic by the Anti-Defamation League is planning a 'Day of Resistance' across college campuses in support of the Hamas attacks in Israel that killed 1,200. Students for Justice in Palestine was founded at the University of California at Berkeley in 2001 and counts over 200 chapters across the United States, Canada and New Zealand. While the ADL claims that the group says 'they reject anti-Semitism, they also regularly demonize Jewish students who identify as Zionists or proud supporters of the State of Israel.'

For months, University of California President Michael V. Drake has been unnerved by a series of security threats at his Berkeley home: Racist graffiti. A smashed window. A break-in. Trespassers who jumped a fence surrounding the property that was erected in March. In one particularly disturbing attack in May, a vandal spray-painted racial slurs and profanity across the front and back of the presidential residence. Drake, the UC system's first Black president in its 155-year history, was not at home. But the attack shocked the UC and Berkeley community, led to an ongoing hate crime investigation by local law enforcement...

Video of prominent Berkeley Law Dean Erwin Chemerinsky telling his class during a lecture he’d lie in a deposition now says he was totally joking, and his class knows it.In late June, a short video of Chemerinsky was posted on social media in which he said to students:“I’ll give you an example from our law school, but if ever I’m deposed, I’m going to deny I said this to you. When we do faculty hiring, we’re quite conscious that diversity is important to us, and we say diversity is important, it’s fine to say that.”The video was posted by popular...

VIDEOThe same Berkeley Law Dean, Erwin Chereminsky, who explained how to CIRCUMVENT the Supreme Court ruling on Affirmative Action claims that conservatives are NOT suppressed on college campuses around the country despite violence erupting against conservatives at his own UC Berkeley campus. Here you see him making his divorced-from-reality declaration in December 2018.

A graduate student at the University of California, Berkeley, has been killed in Mexico — where his bullet-riddled body was found in his SUV after his fiancée reported him missing on his trip to conduct field research about plants. Gabriel Trujillo, 31, a botanist and fourth-year PhD candidate in the Department of Integrative Biology, was shot seven times June 19 in the northwest state of Sonora and his body was discovered three days later, his family said.

A Colorado-based legal group filed a civil rights complaint against the University of California Berkeley (Berkeley) over holding a segregated graduation ceremony in May.The Mountain States Legal Foundation (MSLF) filed an administrative complaint with the Department of Education Monday, alleging the university violated the Civil Rights Act.In May, Berkeley continued its decades-long tradition of holding a separate “Black Graduation” ceremony for African Americans. In a statement to a local Fox affiliate, the university defended the ceremony as part of the institution’s commitment to “diversity, equity, and inclusion and belonging among all members of our community.”“As such, Berkeley’s Black Graduation serves...

The University of California-Berkeley’s African American Studies Department announced it would be hosting its annual "Black Graduation" ceremony for students on May 19 in a virtual format. “The Department of African American Studies plans on hosting our annual Black Graduation ceremony, which is open to all majors and degree programs across the campus,” read the announcement. The separate ceremony for African American students appears to have started as an annual event at the public university in 2013. The graduation ceremony is separate from the main graduation ceremony, which will be held virtually on May 15. Megan Wang, a sophomore at...

A California man found guilty of lighting UC Berkeley students on fire inside a boba tea shop in 2020 with a blowtorch has been released from custody and will avoid jail time, The Berkeley Scanner reports. Brandon McGlone, 49, was referred to the Veterans Treatment Court and will be participating in a "diversion treatment" program as part of his plea deal, according to Alameda County Superior Court records. Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price, who ran on "racial equity", agreed to the plea deal after reaching an agreement with the public defender's office, the outlet reports. At a court hearing...

The city of Berkeley has long been associated with leftism. Famed San Francisco columnist Herb Caen nicknamed the city Berserkeley as an homage to its radical politics. The extremism infects both the town and its famous campus, the University of California, Berkeley. Although most other college campuses have caught up with UC Berkeley, it’s still the grande dame of leftist extremism. That’s what makes it so lovely that Berkeley is wrestling with a bitter historic truth: The name “Berkeley” is an homage to a one-time Rhode Island-based slaveholder who was unimpressed by Native Americans.From the Bay Area News Group:The problematic...

A California professor who claimed she was Native American for her entire life has revealed she is white, apologizing for breaking the trust of the Native communities she lived alongside. Elizabeth Hoover, an associate professor in the Environmental Science and Policy Management department at UC Berkeley, said she “incorrectly identified” herself based on “incomplete information, according to a statement posted to her personal website on Monday. “In uncritically living an identity based on family stories without seeking out a documented connection to these communities, I caused harm,” Hoover said. Hoover, who has published books and articles about Native American food...

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit tossed a Berkeley, California, ban on gas stoves on Monday, saying that the federal Energy Policy and Conservation Act preempted state and local authorities in regulating natural gas. The Courthouse News Service reported: The three-judge panel’s ruling reverses a federal judge’s dismissal of a lawsuit by the California Restaurant Association claiming the Energy Policy and Conservation Act preempts the San Francisco Bay Area city’s ban. The group said the ordinance would affect chefs’ ability to prepare food the way they are typically trained — using natural gas stoves.

The tech executive who has been arrested for the murder of Cash App founder Bob Lee can be named as 38-year-old Berkeley graduate, Nima Momeni. Momeni was arrested today at his home in Emeryville, around nine miles from where Lee was stabbed to death on April 4. He is the owner of Expand IT, a tech business in the Bay Area, and describes himself online as a start-up entrepreneur. Lee was stabbed in the street last week while visiting the city from Miami, where he lived. It is unclear if Momeni attended the same tech conference Lee was in town...

The candidate strides to the podium and launches into his attack on his state’s educational system. Students are being “indoctrinated” with leftist propaganda by radical professors, he declares. In office, he establishes a system of surveillance over what students are learning and doing. He advocates firing faculty members who stray from the official line, calls for narrowing the topics covered in textbooks (especially those dealing with minorities), and takes steps to replace administrators with people closer to his own politics. It’s all about “saving” the system, he insists, not tearing it down. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, marching toward the Republican...

Tucker Carlson sat down with a former Capitol Police officer who was ignored by the House Jan. 6 Select Committee despite the pivotal role he had that day. Tarik Johnson, a 22-year veteran on the Capitol Hill force, was tasked with securing the certification of the 2020 presidential election. "My voice is one of the first ones you hear on the audio transmission, so I did expect to get an interview sometime, but it didn't happen." Johnson told "Tucker Carlson Tonight" about the House Select Committee in an interview aired Tuesday. "I guess the focus was on Donald Trump." Despite...

East Bay residents didn’t have to brave dangerous driving conditions to get to Tahoe to enjoy some snow this week. They didn't even have to go any further than Berkeley's Tilden Regional Park to go skiing Friday morning. After a mix of rain and snow overnight, snow was accumulating in earnest by 6:30 a.m. By midmorning, there was enough to (sort of) enjoy winter sports. Twitter user Jay Sayre posted multiple videos of him skiing in the Berkeley regional park, which reaches about 1,900 feet in elevation at its highest point. exp-player-logo Sayre even managed to catch some air near...

More pharmacies are closing in the Bay Area, adding to an already shrinking list of stores. Walgreens recently purchased Pharmaca, which once operated at least seven stores in the Bay Area, and will shutter the company’s shops. Pharmaca’s East Bay locations in Berkeley and Oakland ended pharmacy services Feb. 9, and the store’s retail component is set to end by Feb. 25, according to reporting from the Oaklandside. The only San Francisco location, in Cole Valley, closed in October 2022. There are Pharmaca locations in Mill Valley, Menlo Park, Sonoma, Napa and Novato. exp-player-logo Read More Walgreens recently bought Medly...

Skeletonized human remains were found in an unused residence hall on the campus of University of California, Berkeley last week, officials said. The skeleton was found in the shuttered graffiti-ridden building on the Clark Kerr Campus on Jan. 10, but it remains unclear how many years the remains were there, police said. The building is a residential hall complex and event space that sits roughly a mile from the main campus and has not been occupied for many years. Police said there are no outstanding cases of missing persons from the Berkeley campus community. University students received a campus alert...

A groundbreaking complaint has been filed with the US Department of Education Office of Human Rights against University of California, Berkeley Law School, over the August 2022 discriminatory decision of at least nine student groups to adopt a bylaw excluding Zionist speakers. Gabriel Groisman, a Florida-based attorney and partner at LSN Law, PA and Arsen Ostrovsky, an Israel-based attorney and CEO of The International Legal Forum submitted the joint complaint. The complaint alleges that the bylaw represents “profound and deep-seated antisemitic discrimination” against Jewish students, faculty and staff at UC Berkeley Law School. .....

Fifty-seven years ago, Ayn Rand predicted the red wave sweeping America today. The Left Cashes In On The Real Red Wave By Eileen F. Toplansky Indeed, there was a red wave but not the one conservatives had hoped for. It was, however, the continuation of the leftists’, Marxists’, and communists’ eternal obsession to destroy America and obliterate her values—and Ayn Rand predicted it in her 1965 seminal book titled The New Left: The Anti-Industrial Revolution. Frighteningly prescient, Rand understood the beginnings of the “intellectual disintegration” that is now front and center in most colleges. Fifty-seven years later, the Left is...