Free Republic

For many parents, August is a month of both pride and tears. Pride because their teenager is taking that big educational step and tears because for many it's the beginning of an empty nest. Yet, there's a going-away-to-college question that far too few parents ask or even contemplate: What will my youngster learn in college? The American Council of Trustees and Alumni provides some answers that turn out to be quite disturbing. ACTA evaluated every four-year public university as well as hundreds of private colleges and universities. That's more than 1,100 institutions that enroll nearly 8 million students, more than...

Looking over the frenzied political landscape in America today, one marred by constant clashes between right and left, a single issue rises above the rest. In many areas of public life, conservatives – their words, their views and values – are under assault. Conservative speech is under direct attack by ultra-left, radical activists who are methodically expunging conservative speech and conservative ideas from public discourse.This threat to the First Amendment and to the sharing of viewpoints held by roughly half of all Americans, is taking many forms but is often paired with harsh threats and actual acts of violence directed...

The First Amendment to our Constitution was proposed by the 1788 Virginia ratification convention during its narrow 89 to 79 vote to ratify the Constitution. Virginia's resolution held that the free exercise of religion, right to assembly and free speech could not be canceled, abridged or restrained. These Madisonian principles were eventually ratified by the states on March 1, 1792. Gettysburg College professor Allen C. Guelzo, in his article "Free Speech and Its Present Crisis," appearing in the autumn 2018 edition of City Journal, explores the trials and tribulations associated with the First Amendment. The early attempts to suppress free...

Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Economics at Ohio University Richard Vedder's new book, "Restoring the Promise," published by the Independent Institute based in Oakland, California, is about the crisis in higher education. He summarizes the three major problems faced by America's colleges and universities. First, our universities "are vastly too expensive, often costing twice as much per student compared with institutions in other industrialized democracies." Second, though there are some important exceptions, students "on average are learning relatively little, spend little time in academic preparation and in some disciplines are indoctrinated by highly subjective ideology." Third, "there is a mismatch between...

Many people, years after they graduate from high school and college, have nightmares about taking exams for a course for which they have done none of the reading and are totally unprepared. They wake up full of anxiety and relax only when they realize they left school years ago. But increasingly, it seems like none of us ever get out of school, as the rules and restrictions that have proliferated on college and university campuses over the last two or three decades ooze out and spread to the wider society. We find ourselves dealing, exams aside, with the campusfication of...

PITTSBURGH -- When the Pittsburgh Pirates opened their season two weeks ago at PNC Park, Nathan Sibley, a York County, Pennsylvania, kid who struggled in high school and subsequently stood little chance to attend a four-year college had earned the job for the major league club that nearly every fan in the ballpark pays attention to. "I am the captioner for the Pirates for the JumboTron," Sibley said. He earned the job after he interned for the Pirates last summer through a program at the community college he attends. It's a dream come true for a student who did not...

In a Chicago courtroom last week, Jussie Smollett pleaded not guilty to 16 felony counts of lying to authorities. His defense strategy is not yet known, but perhaps his lawyers will say Smollett picked the wrong stage. To succeed, a hate crime hoax needs a place where people expect outbursts of bigotry. An upscale Chicago neighborhood at 2 a.m. is all wrong. Late-night workers in the nearby NBC Tower aren’t out roaming in MAGA hats, bleach bottles and hemp nooses at the ready. To sell that story, you need a plausible setting—say, a woke college campus.Colleges provide the ideal venue...

On Thursday, members of Grand Canyon University's Young Americans for Freedom chapter were told that they would not be able to host conservative pundit Ben Shapiro on campus. The GCU administrators told the students that Shapiro was just too “cut throat” and divisive, according to YAF. Additionally, they reasoned that a Shapiro appearance would not be good for the school long-term, hoping to maintain its culture of unity, love, and respect.YAF scoffed in response.“By caving to an unseen mob and ignoring the popularity of Shapiro among its student body, Grand Canyon University just played itself and deserves whatever negative response...

Just within the past week or so, some shocking professorial behavior has come to light. In the wake of Barbara Bush's death, California State University, Fresno professor Randa Jarrar took to Twitter to call the former first lady an "amazing racist." Jarrar added, "PSA: either you are against these pieces of s--- and their genocidal ways or you're part of the problem. that's actually how simple this is. I'm happy the witch is dead. can't wait for the rest of her family to fall to their demise the way 1.5 million iraqis have. byyyeeeeeeee." In New Jersey, Brookdale Community College...

Where do we draw the line? If you're a college professor with tenure, can you say anything, no matter how hateful, and get away with it? Are there any limits to free speech on campus, especially at a public university where professors have First Amendment rights? These are questions that come up from time to time, usually after a professor -- almost always someone from the so-called progressive left -- says or tweets something widely seen as indecent and outrageous. And so now the questions have come up again, this time the offending boor is a professor of creative writing...

Despite the present situation of the academy, some of us nevertheless remain committed to the classical ideal of a liberal arts education, and we remain hopeful that the militant left that has taken control of the University will not succeed in its endeavor to vanquish this ideal.This being said, it would be dishonest to say that there isn’t an all-too frequent number of occasions when my hope is tested.Recent happenings provide several cases in point. 1. At the University of Chicago, several activist student groups—Reparations at UChicago, the UChicago Socialists, UofC Resists, a graduate student union, and a local chapter of...

Editor's Note: This piece was coauthored by Ed Feulner.You can’t put a price on education, the saying goes, but if you did, it would be very high. And the cost falls on everyone. Indeed, our economy is hampered by a two-pronged higher education problem: collectively, Americans have racked up some $1.4 trillion in outstanding student loan debt. At the same time, that debt has been amassed by those who drop out before earning a degree and by those earning degrees with limited utility in the market. Yet, despite growing evidence that generous federal subsidies have driven tuition increases, policymakers continue...

A frequent point I have made in past columns has been about the educational travesty happening on many college campuses. Some people have labeled my observations and concerns as trivial, unimportant and cherry-picking. While the spring semester awaits us, let's ask ourselves whether we'd like to see repeats of last year's antics. An excellent source for college news is Campus Reform, a conservative website operated by the Leadership Institute (https://www.campusreform.org). Its reporters are college students. Here is a tiny sample of last year's bizarre stories. Donna Riley, a professor at Purdue University's School of Engineering Education, published an article in...

Just when you thought the state of higher education couldn’t get any lower, the Young America’s Foundation surveyed 50 major colleges to see what courses they are offering as legitimate “higher education” in the 2017-18 academic year.  As is evident by a reading of the complete survey, the new religion in America— “the religion of sex”—has taken over part of the academy and made it their temple.  Here’s just a small sampling of the crazy courses now being offered:Up at Northwestern University there’s a course that typifies many being offered at campuses all over the country.  It’s called, Beyond the...

“Groupthink” is a phenomenon that social psychologists know well.  It was in 1972 that Irving Janis first coined the term, and since this time the concept of groupthink has been applied to the study of decision-making in various contexts.However, all too rarely have scholars analyzed academia in terms of groupthink.  Yet there can be no question that contemporary academics at most universities and colleges throughout America (and beyond) are at least as much as and, truth be told, probably much more so than anyone else under the spell of Groupthink.I have been teaching philosophy for the last 18 years.  I...

Dear President Stearns (prestalk@umontana.edu):Earlier this semester, I was invited to speak at the University of Montana (UM) as part of a distinguished lecture series funded by an outside benefactor. For ten years, the series has been organized in conjunction with the school of journalism and has involved meetings with journalism students and professors. The nine previous lectures went off without a hitch. Then, they invited me to speak in February of 2018. Now, I have been banned from speaking on your campus.The decision to ban me from speaking at UM was made by Dean of Journalism Larry Abramson. In an...

If it were a plague, the government would rush to quarantine the infected, as occurred during Europe's Black Death in the 14th century. An immigration debate at Seattle University School of Law is a plague of a different sort, but deadly in a different way. The victim here is the right to free speech. The Washington Free Beacon reports that Annette Clark, the dean of Seattle University's Law School, has revoked the school's sponsorship of a Federalist Society event. The reason? The proposed debate on immigration, hosted by the school's Access to Justice Institute, might be "harmful" to minority students...

Francisco Salinas is the Director of Student Diversity and Inclusion at Boise State University (BSU). He is perhaps the most intellectually constipated college administrator working west of the Mississippi and outside of the State of California. Due to his relative obscurity, his mendacity was well hidden until he decided to lash out at BSU Professor Scott Yenor. I am writing today in Yenor’s defense.The motivation for Salinas’ vicious attack on his colleague was that Professor Yenor decided to write an article in which he criticized feminism in general and gender identity politics in particular. In other words, he decided to...

As George Orwell said, "some ideas are so stupid that only intellectuals believe them." Many stupid ideas originate with academics on college campuses. If they remained there and didn't infect the rest of society, they might be a source of entertainment, much in the way a circus is. Let's look at a few stupid ideas peddled by intellectuals. During the Cold War, academic leftists made a moral equivalency between communist totalitarianism and democracy. Worse is the fact that they exempted communist leaders from the type of harsh criticism directed toward Adolf Hitler, even though communist crimes against humanity made Hitler's...

When a policy has been vigorously followed by venerable institutions for more than a generation without getting any closer to producing the desired results, perhaps there is some problem with the goal. That thought was prompted by a New York Times story headlined "Even With Affirmative Action, Blacks and Hispanics Are More Underrepresented at Top Colleges Than 35 Years Ago." It presented enrollment data from 100 selective colleges and universities -- the eight Ivy League schools, nine University of California campuses, 20 "top" liberal arts colleges, 14 "other top universities" and 50 "flagship" state universities. (They total 100 because UC...