Free Republic

The Democratic superlawyer who resigned in disgrace from the #MeToo organization Time's Up after helping former New York governor Andrew Cuomo (D.) discredit his accusers is now defending Columbia University against a lawsuit alleging that it fosters a pervasive culture of anti-Semitism. Roberta Kaplan filed notice last month to represent Columbia and its sister college, Barnard, against lawsuits that accuse school leaders of enabling an "antisemitic hostile educational environment" in the wake of Hamas's terrorist attack on Israel. Students Against Antisemitism and a group of five Columbia students allege that school leaders have turned a blind eye as anti-Semitic activists...

Growth came after Yale instituted a diversity hiring initiative and pledged to expand DEI offices campuswide Yale University employs more than three administrators and support staff for every four undergraduate students – roughly one administrator per undergrad, according to a College Fix analysis. Over the last decade, Yale added 631 administrators and support staff to its payroll, according to data provided by administrators to the federal Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System. As the university embraced new DEI efforts, the number of administrators and support staff increased by 13 percent, from 4,942 to 5,573, between 2013-14 and 2021-22, the analysis found....

Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week” that only Democrats can deliver on tighter control of the U.S.-Mexico border. Achor Jonathan Karl said, “You’ve seen poll after poll. I could cite the latest Quinnipiac, but there’s been poll after poll showing an overwhelming majority of Americans disapprove of how President Biden has handled the border, and we’ve also seen the flow over the border dramatically increase under the president.

Almost five years since Jennifer Dulos was last seen, Michelle Troconis has been convicted in her death and disappearance. A six-person jury deliberated for more than three days — after hearing eight weeks worth of evidence and testimony — and delivered the verdict Friday. They found Troconis, 49, guilty of all six counts: Conspiracy to commit murder, two counts of conspiracy to tamper with physical evidence, two counts of tampering with physical evidence and one count of second-degree hindering prosecution. Troconis faces up to 50 years in prison if a judge decides to sentence her to consecutive terms. The conspiracy...

Alade McKen plagiarized pages of material from Wikipedia.. The chief diversity, equity, and inclusion officer of Columbia University's medical school, Alade McKen, plagiarized extensively in his doctoral dissertation, lifting entire pages of material, without attribution, from sources that include Wikipedia, according to a complaint submitted to the university on Wednesday. The allegations implicate approximately a fifth of McKen's 163-page dissertation, "'UBUNTU' I am because we are: A case study examining the experiences of an African-centered Rites of Passage program within a community-based organization," submitted to Iowa State University's School of Education in 2021. More than two of those pages are...

Harvard has a plagiarism problem. At the beginning of the year, Claudine Gay resigned as university president following a plagiarism scandal. Weeks later, the Washington Free Beacon published a report indicating that Harvard’s chief diversity officer, Sherri Ann Charleston, apparently plagiarized passages in multiple academic papers. Now allegations have emerged that another Harvard DEI administrator, Shirley Greene, of Harvard Extension School, plagiarized more than 40 passages of her 2008 dissertation, “Converging Frameworks: Examining the Impact of Diversity-Related College Experiences on Racial/Ethnic Identity Development.” According to the Harvard directory, Greene is a Title IX coordinator affiliated with the Office for Gender...

NEW ENGLAND GRID NEEDS: New England’s grid operator warned that the region will need to invest nearly $1 billion in its electric transmission infrastructure per year through 2050 to avoid capacity shortfalls and handle the rising power demand—especially as wind and solar make up a rising share of its energy mix. Takeaways: The report modeled for several different demand scenarios through 2050. The low end of 51 GW could be achieved only if the region kept online some stored fuels like natural gas and oil—which is almost a certain impossibility, given the emissions reduction targets passed by several of the...

Yale University will once again require standardized testing for students applying for admission in the fall of 2025. The decision, announced today, ends the test-optional undergraduate admissions process that had been in place at Yale since the pandemic. According to the announcement, the past four years of test-optional admissions had given Yale what it described as “an invaluable opportunity to think deeply about testing policy and to generate new data and analyses. With testing availability now fully restored for prospective applicants around the world, we have reevaluated our policy with the benefit of fresh insights.” Yale is describing its new...

Sidney Chalhoub pledged to support 'Palestinian liberation' as part of Harvard Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine ... The chairman of Harvard University's history department is a member of a faculty group, Harvard Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine, that posted an anti-Semitic cartoon over the holiday weekend depicting a hand emblazoned with the Star of David holding a noose around the necks of one black man and one Arab man. In the background, a black arm swings a machete scrawled with the phrase, "liberation movement." The image was posted alongside a message from the faculty group arguing...

Senate leaders on Sunday released the details of a long-awaited comprehensive border security bill, which also contains a substantial foreign aid component.The discussions, led by Senators James Lankford (R-OK), Krysten Sinema (I-AZ), and Chris Murphy (D-CT), come after months of negotiations with the Biden regime, seeking to address both the ongoing crisis at the U.S. southern border and foreign policy commitments abroad.The 370-page deal, according to Senator Patty Murray (D-WA), Chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, claims it reflects weeks of good-faith negotiations, balancing domestic concerns with urgent international aid needs.“As Ukraine runs low on ammunition to fend off Putin’s...

The Bridgeport, Conn., mayoral election that began last fall is set to conclude at the end of the month, amid multiple election fraud complaints and investigations. Alleged election fraud has overshadowed the largest city in Connecticut as the mayoral election that was originally scheduled last year is set to conclude in a couple of weeks. A "Do-Over" mayoral election was ordered by a judge in November after a video was posted online that appeared to show a supporter of incumbent Democrat Mayor Joe Ganim stuffing stacks of papers into an absentee ballot drop box during the September Democratic mayoral primary...

State Senate Minority Leader Kevin Kelly was abruptly and surprisingly replaced by first-term Sen. Stephen Harding as caucus leader on Friday, culminating tensions that has been brewing since before the start of the legislative session earlier this month. Kelly, a lawyer, was in his fourth year leading the minority caucus as a moderate trying to keep together the dozen-member group, including more-conservative lawmakers. His role was to help the caucus reach consensus on legislation often pushed by the 24-12 Democratic majority, and summing up floor debates prior to the final word from Senate President Pro Tempore Martin New of New...

Harvard is among the many U.S. schools that remain committed ... as of February 6, 2024, an astounding 68 American colleges and universities still have Covid shot mandates in place. Yes, you read that correctly. There are 68 schools in the United States that continue to push the mRNA serum on college students across America. ... The list includes historically elite schools like Harvard and Johns Hopkins. It also includes a variety of ultra leftist colleges in California and New York, and elsewhere, coupled with a significant amount of historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs). ... Speaking of Harvard, they...

Harvard University is obstructing a congressional probe into campus-wide anti-Semitism, leading lawmakers to warn the Ivy League school that it will face a deluge of subpoenas if it continues to stonewall the investigation. "Harvard's responses have been grossly insufficient, and the limited and dilatory nature of its productions is obstructing the Committee's efforts," Rep. Virginia Foxx (R., N.C.), the chairwoman of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, wrote to interim Harvard president Alan Garber on Wednesday. Harvard has until Feb. 14 to produce documents outlining its internal response to a growing wave of anti-Semitism on campus, including records...

WINDSOR LOCKS, Conn. — For several years, a problem has been brewing for Lockheed Martin’s F-35: future upgrades will make the jet run even hotter than it does now, more than its current cooling system is believed to be able to handle. In the near term, Pentagon officials expect that a high-profile upgrade to the plane’s F135 engine will avoid most of these cooling issues. But in the longer term, the military fears future aircraft upgrades needed to keep pace with threats decades down the line will push the heat factor even higher, and officials have recently suggested they’re casting...

Several large public universities are getting multimillion dollar budget cuts.. The bursting of the higher education bubble has finally struck its first blow, and it is a serious one. Several major public universities have announced multimillion dollar budget cuts in January, citing enrollment declines among other factors. Pennsylvania State University expects to cut $94 million from its budget starting in July 2025. The University of Connecticut (UConn) announced significant budget cuts in response to its projected $70 million deficit. And the University of New Hampshire (UNH) will slash expenses by $14 million. These cuts were a long time coming—higher education...

On Friday, Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont (D) said that the fact that they cut taxes and “kept things open during COVID” has helped the state grow its population and the state has managed to balance its budget because it has attracted more people to the state. On CNBC’s “Squawk Box,” Lamont stated, “We inherited a $2 billion deficit. The first thing thing I wanted to do five years ago was make sure we didn’t raise taxes. That’s what the five previous governors had done. Now, it’s five years later, we’ve got our budget balanced. We’re making investments. And we’re able...

On Friday’s broadcast of CNBC’s “Squawk Box,” Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont (D) stated that he has offered to let President Joe Biden use the Connecticut Guard to help secure the border, but Biden won’t use them. Co-host Andrew Ross Sorkin asked, “You may need housing for a different reason, immigration. You have people being bused up there — not in the same way that is being — that’s happening here — what do you think of the immigration problem in America, and do you think that blue states, which, for so long, thought this was a not in my backyard...

Dalal Saeb Iriqat said she would never forgive Israel for 'making us take their children and elderly as hostages'.. The Harvard Kennedy School is set to host a Palestinian professor who called Hamas’ massacre of Israeli civilians a “normal struggle for freedom,” and said she would never forgive Israel’s government for “making us take their children and elderly as hostages.” Dalal Saeb Iriqat, a professor of diplomacy and conflict resolution at the Arab American University in Ramallah is set to speak at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center as part of its Middle East Dialogues series on March 7, 2024....

Balada [the school principal] says that the [menstrual product] dispenser in the boys bathroom was installed at 9:30 Wednesday morning and “by 9:52 AM, tampons were on the floor, the newly installed distribution box was ripped off the wall along with the masonry anchors, and the distribution box itself was destroyed.”