Free Republic

A woman is facing felony and misdemeanor charges after she allegedly posted about wanting to kick a pro-life display booth at Miami University, in Ohio. Key Takeaways: * Nineteen-year-old Alexandra Patterson was arrested and charged after she allegedly posted a threat against Miami University pro-life students to a social messaging app. * In the message, she suggested that either dining dollars would be available to anyone who would 'kirk' a pro-life student table or that she herself was willing to 'kirk' the table in exchange for dining dollars. * The post was a reference to the September 2025 assassination or...

My wife, daughter, and I walk through our neighborhood every day. I’ve been monitoring the situation at one house for the last few years—the yard is usually clogged with old furniture, chairs, sofas, lamps, and every other type of regularly discarded household item imaginable. In recent months, a dumpster has been parked in the yard instead. That dumpster contains the contents formerly strewn across the yard. It appears, upon closer inspection, that the mass inside the dumpster continues to grow. The root problem (hoarding) remains unsolved, even as the symptom (the hoard) is slowly managed. There are some, however, who...

Hardly anybody thinks better of themselves than journalists—their foremost competition being, perhaps, academics. The cacophony of self-congratulation reaches a peak in state-funded journalism; the fact of the venture’s unprofitability seems to testify to its virtue. When Congress defunded the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB)—the financier of the likes of NPR and PBS—in 2025, the kind of person who considers it nobler to rip money from the wallets of taxpayers than to get it by providing a valuable good or service was made livid. (Another kind of person will be unsurprised to learn that, with the defunding of CPB, the industry...

On May 13, 2026 Do No Harm, a healthcare education advocacy group, sent an open letter to the Council on Social Work Education (CSWE), the national accrediting agency for social work education programs, demanding the removal of all DEI requirements from its accreditation standards. The letter, which cited specific DEI mandates imposed by CSWE, argued these requirements are ideologically divisive, and pointed to President Trump’s April 2025 executive order on accreditation reform, along with federal anti-discrimination law, as grounds for compliance. CSWE refused. Dr. Halaevalu Vakalahi, the CSWE’s president and CEO, argued the executive order does not apply to her...

College Republicans at the University of Utah were attacked by a male who claims to be a woman yesterday while tabling an event and asking a poll question about gender. The student, identified as "Amber Grace," now faces assault and property damage charges. "Do you believe that we should have the right to freedom of speech?" one of the College Republicans asks. "No," laughs Mr. Grace. "I think Republicans should be shot in the street, personally." "So you're advocating for straight up violence toward people you disagree with?" the student asks. Then Mr. Grace appears to lunge forward and attack...

Several years ago, when I headed marketing at a major public university, a colleague suggested we needed our own “moonshot” to stem the tide of declining enrollment. I took the question seriously, given the catastrophic demographic “cliff” American higher education will soon endure, and then offered up the kind of moonshot I’m sure he didn’t expect. Namely, a national campaign funded by the higher education industry to encourage the growth of families and reverse the baby dearth that has left the U.S. procreating below replacement levels. This was no doubt a long-term strategy, and quite an expensive one at that,...

At the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, computer science student Jaylen Carroll found an unexpected connection between artificial intelligence (AI) and horticulture. Drawing on his academic interests, he helped develop a digital visitor experience for the university’s Botanical Gardens. The project proved useful enough that the gardens hired him to continue the work. It is a modest success story, but perhaps a more revealing one than another billion-dollar AI announcement. A student applied technology to a real problem, discovered its practical value, and earned the opportunity to further develop his skills. This is what workforce readiness should look like....

In the 2011 film Moneyball, Brad Pitt portrays Oakland Athletics general manager Billy Beane, who listens as his scouts enthusiastically praise an up-and-coming baseball player. Beane, unimpressed, asks a simple question. “If he’s a good hitter, why doesn’t he hit good?” This question should be asked about America’s elite universities, particularly in light of the ongoing Cornell Seven controversy. If these institutions are, as some describe them, bastions of rape culture, misogyny, and the institutional protection of sexual predators, why do so many young women desperately want to attend them? And why are their parents willing to spend or borrow...

Some statistics are not just illuminating, they are downright shocking. Here’s one. At the University of Texas at Austin, one of America’s top universities, only 300 students graduated with a major in the humanities. That would be a big number if UT graduated 1,200 students, but it actually graduates about 12,000. The percentage of humanities major is 0.025 percent. It rounds to zero. That dismal statistic is replicated at universities across the country. While Texas certainly likes to think of itself as unique, in this case, it’s not. At every university, big and small, fewer and fewer students are studying...

Yeshiva University takes its name from a Jewish study hall, where dissenting views and passionate disagreements are encouraged. However, YU’s institutionalization of DEI—a profoundly rigid, intolerant ideology—flies in the face of what a yeshiva is. YU professes to be “rooted in Jewish thought and tradition” and committed to “timeless values.” This makes sense—Jewish tradition has lasted for thousands of years and was arguably instrumental in the founding of the United States. DEI, on the other hand, is anything but timeless; it has Marxist roots, and no Marxist society has ever prospered. Alas, YU’s curricula reveals its commitment to timeless values...

In 2012, Dr. Daniel Coupland, professor of Education at Hillsdale College, published a Martin Center (then the Pope Center) article entitled “A College Reinvents Teacher Education.” That piece described how Hillsdale’s Education Department resisted the state of Michigan’s mandate that all teacher certification programs in the state be nationally accredited. Coupland wrote that following the decision to move away from state certification, Hillsdale’s faculty “began to think about what teacher education could be without the ideological straitjacket (i.e., ‘standards’) from the state.” A glance at the standards listed on the website of CAEP (the largest national accreditation agency for education...

A new survey finds that nearly half of undergraduate students support censorship, shout-downs, and physical violence to suppress what they consider “hate speech” or offensive ideas. Fox News reports that the 2026 National Undergraduate Student Survey, released this month by the Buckley Institute, shows that 45 percent of undergraduate students surveyed believe physical violence can be justified to stop so-called hate speech. That number is up 6 points from 2025 and ties the all-time record set in 2023. The survey, which polled 803 full-time undergraduate students at four-year public and private colleges across the United States, revealed several record-high metrics...

For quite a few years, the opponents of using standardized tests in college admissions were riding high. More and more schools were falling for the argument that the tests were unfair if not outright racist, and were not good at predicting whether a student would succeed in college. More recently, the battle’s course has shifted, as numerous colleges and universities have reinstated the requirement that applicants submit their scores on one of the tests. Naturally, this has inflamed the anti-testing forces. In a New York Times piece published on Sept. 16, Miriam Pawel declares, “This California Educational Juggernaut Doesn’t Need...

Students at the University of Colorado are in for some rocky news. Boulder, the beautiful college town the CU calls home, is one of the most dangerous in America, according to a new study. One the other hand, the Gators aren’t as perilous as they look. Gainesville, home of the University of Florida, is one of the safest college towns. The study from Lesson Maker Pro evaluated 174 college towns — big and small — across seven safety metrics, tracking crimes from Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) violations and hate crimes to robberies and aggravated assaults. Researchers culled data from...

Late in the second quarter Saturday at Darrell K Royal–Texas Memorial Stadium, No. 7 Texas was up 14 points on a Florida team in free fall. The Gators, ranked as high as No. 8 earlier this month, were coming off back-to-back blowout losses, the second of which was handed to them by a South Carolina squad that was previously winless in SEC competition. To top it off, Florida arrived in Austin with its QB1 nursing a shoulder injury that he suffered in that disheartening setback to the Gamecocks.

A stunning new poll has revealed that American young people are expressing positive views toward Sharia law at higher rates than ever as the midterm elections approach in three weeks. Experts say much of the support can be attributed to the lack of balanced formation being provided by American universities and fear of being labeled racist, leading to young people being ill-informed about the oppression inherent in Islamic legal code.Earlier this month, Rasmussen Reports published the results of a survey that found a full 43% of voters aged 18-24 saying they have positive views of Sharia law. Strikingly, the poll...

A young woman reported that she was raped in a frat house bathroom at the University of Chicago — as a group of men cheered “when’s my turn” and “let me in,” outside the door. The shocking report at another elite university fraternity house comes weeks after the “Cornell 7” gang rape allegations. The alleged assault at UChicago took place in the early hours of Sunday during a rowdy party at the Alpha Epsilon Pi fraternity house in Hyde Park, The New York Times reported. The woman, 21, was not a student of the university but attended the party alongside...

It has been nearly four years since OpenAI announced ChatGPT in November of 2022, and most universities continue to muddle along with their AI efforts. Many are treating it as a tactical academic integrity issue when it really is about strategic organizational transformation. If done right, AI can fundamentally change how students learn, faculty teach and conduct research, and universities operate. Based on our 2025 internal survey of UNC professors, 95% of our faculty agree that our students must leave Carolina ready to use AI intelligently and ethically. Overall, while 90% of college students are using AI, 58% of them...

(The Center Square) – An Ohio college that touted a “Free College Benefit Program” was actually illegally funded with millions in taxpayer dollars, according to indictments released Thursday. A grand jury in Jefferson County indicted three people for stealing $20 million from Eastern Gateway Community College, a state school which has now closed, Ohio State Auditor Keith Faber said. Michael Perik, Nicole Rowe Colclasure and Michael Geoghegan are accused of diverting Pell grants and other federal financial aid state funds through “fraudulent reimbursements and illegal incentive payments, “ Faber said Thursday. The “Free College Benefit Program” caused the school’s enrollment...

Students at Cornell University began what was billed as a seven-hour sit-in on Wednesday in solidarity with "Jane Doe," the former student who alleges she was drugged and raped by multiple members of a fraternity on its Ithaca, N.Y., campus in October 2024. "Seven hours for the seven hours she endured," a coalition of Cornell student groups said in an Instagram post announcing the demonstration. "Seven hours of solidarity. Seven hours demanding change."