Free Republic

Does 11 people hanging out count as a “party?” Northeastern University dismissed 11 students Friday after they held a small party in a hotel room Wednesday, the school announced in a press release. The 11 students “are no longer part of the Northeastern community for the fall semester.” All 11 kids were first-years and part of a special one-semester program that cost $36,500, the Boston Globe reported. Northeastern is not refunding their money. The students were enrolled in a study abroad program, but because of the coronavirus pandemic, “abroad” became the Westin Hotel in downtown Boston, about a mile from...

Unattended pianos in public places are magnetic. Whether it’s an artistically painted piano sitting on a city sidewalk, a standard upright at a school or a grand in a ritzy hotel, the instrument calls to people. In many cases, the people drawn to the keys sadly have little skill, but occasionally someone who clearly knows what they’re doing will show up and answer the siren song of the waiting piano. On Saturday, July 11, it was a small model waiting patiently for a new owner at “ReMARKable Cleanouts,” an antique store and auction house in Norwood, Massachusetts, that grabbed the...

Since the 2008 financial crisis, the history field has seen a precipitous decline in the number of bachelor’s degrees awarded in American colleges. As Benjamin Schmidt, a historian at Northeastern University, reported in the American Historical Association’s Perspectives, the number of history degrees awarded fell by 30 percent—from 34,642 to 24,266 in just nine years from 2008 to 2017. History’s steep decline is not an anomaly, but part and parcel of a broader “crisis” in the humanities. STEM has steamrolled these disciplines on college campuses: Computer science has more than doubled its students between 2013 and 2017. Moreover, critics have...

An activist group has filed a Title IX complaint against Georgetown University Professor Christine Fair, who came under fire earlier this month for calling for the deaths and castration of several GOP senators. “Look at [this] chorus of entitled white men justifying a serial rapist’s arrogated entitlement,” Fair wrote in the tweet on September 29. “All of them deserve miserable deaths while feminists laugh as they take their last gasps. Bonus: we castrate their corpses and feed them to swine? Yes.” Since then, Fair’s Twitter account has been briefly suspended and reactivated. Now, the National Coalition for Men has filed...

Unlike the butchery that bookended it, it merited no presidential statements, no saturation television coverage. But what took place at 6101 Prentice Street on Aug. 21 may say more about the nature of gun violence in the United States than any of those far more famous rampages. It is a snapshot of a different sort of mass violence — one that erupts with such anesthetic regularity that it is rendered almost invisible, except to the mostly black victims, survivors and attackers (...) “Clearly, if it’s black-on-black, we don’t get the same attention because most people don’t identify with that. Most...

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry told college graduates on Friday their diversity is “Donald Trump’s worst nightmare” and it’s their job to confront global issues ranging from terrorism to climate change. […] “You really do look spectacular,” Kerry told the (Northeastern University) graduates. “I want you to just look around you. Classmates from every race, religion, gender, shape, size. Eighty-five countries represented and dozens of languages spoken. You are the most diverse class in Northeastern’s history. In other words, you are Donald Trump’s worst nightmare.” […] A Department of State spokesman said Kerry’s comment about Trump was only a...

Men who open doors for women are as guilty of sexism as those who are rude to them, according to a new study. Psychologists found that a friendly or chivalrous attitude can mask chauvinistic and patronizing views because the men see females as weak creatures in need of their protection. They warned that this “benevolent sexism” was harder to spot than the hostile version borne out of an open antipathy. Jin Goh, a psychologist from Northeastern University, Boston, in the U.S., said: “While many people are sensitive to sexist verbal offences, they may not readily associate sexism with warmth and...

BOSTON, NORTHEASTERN UNIVERSITY UNIVERSITY PROFESSOR ENDORSES JIHAD M. Shahid Alam is Professor of Economics at Northeastern University, Boston. His current research interests include: corruption, growth, global economic history and imperialism. He has published two books, Governments and Markets in Economic Development Strategies (Praeger: 1989) and Poverty from the Wealth of Nations (Macmillan: 1999). His papers have been published in American Economic Review, Cambridge Journal of Economics, Kyklos, Economic Development and Cultural Change, Southern Economic Journal and Journal of Development Economics. Professor Alam holds a BA from the University of Dhaka, MA from the University of Karachi, and Ph.D. from the...

To some major Massachusetts employers, this year's advent of same-sex "marriage" means the end of their domestic-partnership benefit programs. The decision by IBM Corp., the New York Times Co. and Northeastern University to offer health benefits only to "married" same-sex couples pleases some advocates, but troubles others. The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court's Goodridge decision, which legalized same-sex "marriage" as of May 17, "leveled the playing field," said Candace Quinn, vice president of Baystate Health System, which employs 90,000 people. Years ago, she said, Baystate started offering domestic-partner benefits to its homosexual employees, because "they had no other option to cover...

ROBBINS 'EMBEDDED' AT NU Oscar winner Tim Robbins is bringing The Actors' Gang to Northeastern University for the Boston premiere and first national tour of "Embedded," which Robbins wrote and will direct. It's a satirical look at the relationship between the embedded media and the soldiers they cover in an unspecified Mideast conflict. Robbins, who is the troupe's artistic director, and The Actors' Gang will be in residence at NU Dec. 6-11 for performances that will also take place during that time. Promoters unabashedly point out that the play and the troupe reflect Robbins's liberal politics.