Free Republic

Has wokeism jumped the shark? In other words, have the radical Leftists who for years have exercised increasing power in our universities finally gone too far? I dare to hope so. The recent disgraceful responses to the attacks on Israel that we have seen — from American university campuses to the streets of London and Sydney — have dramatically increased awareness that something is rotten in the state of higher education in the English-speaking world. Some of us have been battling against the ideological takeover of academia for close to a decade. Each year, we have been getting better organised....

Jewish students at Cooper Union, a private New York City college, were locked inside a library Wednesday as pro-Palestine and pro-Hamas protesters beat their fists on the doors, screamed, and tried to gain entry.New York police, however, told The Daily Signal that officers didn’t intervene because “no threats of physical violence were made.”(snip)In September, Cooper Union hired a professor who only months earlier threatened to “chop” a New York Post reporter with a machete. Shellyne Rodriguez, a leftist professor who also was caught on video cursing at pro-life protesters and damaging the property of pro-life activists, was fired from her...

Before graduating, students should demonstrate a minimum competence in math, science, and general knowledge. The sheer madness that has gripped many elite universities since October 7 and the butchery, rape, torture, and mutilation of some 1,000 Israeli civilians by Hamas murderers have shocked the public at large. Campus craziness is, of course, nothing new. But quite novel for campuses was the sudden jettisoning of prior campus pretenses. Universities have brazenly dropped their careful two-faced gymnastics to reveal at last–unapologetically, proudly, and defiantly–the moral decay that now characterizes American higher education. Recent news stories have exposed this rot to the world,...

The manipulation of language is an ongoing strategy for disrupting the traditional values and beliefs of American society. Across the broader Western world, cultural revolutionaries wage a relentless campaign to change the vocabulary of everyday citizens, claiming for themselves a sovereign right to police violations of the new nomenclature. “Prostitution” has become “sex work.” “Illegal immigrants” have become “migrant workers.” Sex differences have been eclipsed by talk of “gender identity.” These changes are often spearheaded by activists in our universities. Such constant changes ensure that regular Americans are often uncertain about which words are acceptable in polite society and which...

A Democratic senator blocked a resolution condemning antisemitic speech on college campuses proposed by Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., Thursday. The resolution, for which Hawley sought unanimous consent, comes as pro-Palestinian protests have erupted on college campuses after the deadly surprise attack on Israel carried out by Hamas terrorists that killed and wounded thousands in Israel Oct. 7. "Students at Ohio State praised the heroic resistance in Gaza," Hawley said on the floor. "Heroic - it's now heroic - to massacre Jews in cold blood. It's now heroic to try and carry out a genocide against Jewish people. "Students at the...

On Friday’s broadcast of HBO’s “Real Time,” host Bill Maher urged students not to go to elite colleges because doing so “just makes you stupid” and that these elite schools are “a North Korean re-education camp” that are racist towards Asian applicants that don’t teach history and “if ignorance is a disease, Harvard Yard is the Wuhan wet market.”

The blatant antisemitism on college campuses has shocked millions of Americans over the past week and a half. But not me. I saw antisemitism on a weekly basis in my two years as a faculty “diversity, equity and inclusion” director. In fact, I can safely say that toxic DEI ideology deliberately stokes hatred toward Israel and the Jewish people. I was hired to head the DEI department at Silicon Valley’s De Anza College in 2021. As a black woman, I was the perfect person for the job — on paper.

America’s leading universities have an antisemitism problem—and it starts at the top. This past week, university presidents and deans across the country wrote to their students and faculties to express concern in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on Israel by Hamas. What they said, and what they did not say, provides a window into the culture of intellectual and moral rot and cowardice that reigns at these once-great institutions. Those who attack Jews or Israel are all too often exempt from their excoriation. Hamas terrorists massacred some 1,300 Israelis, took approximately 200 hostages, most of them civilians, and left...