Trinity College Dublin has dropped the word “Freshman” as sexist and offensive for women as well as people who do not identify with male or female genders. From now on, the 425-year-old institution will refer to students as “Fresh.” While that makes students sound that produce, it is meant to avoid term deemed by the “Equality Committee” to be a “concrete expression of the university’s commitment to gender equality.”
Continue reading “Trinity College Dublin Drops Use Of Freshman As Sexist”
The University of Illinois is facing criticism over the actions of one of its graduate students and its own failure to act against him. Tariq Khan, a PhD student at the university, was videotaped at a rally and then going bananas after spotting members of a conservative group called Turning Point USA. Khan was later arrested but the question is how the University of Illinois will respond to yet another assault over the exercise of free speech. The university can clearly review Khan’s conduct on the videotape and judge whether it meets the standards of the university for faculty and students alike.
University of California -Riverside student Edith Macias achieved a degree of fame (or infamy) when she was involved in an ugly incident in September with a fellow student wearing a Make America Great Again hat. Macias ripped the hat off the head of student Matthew Vitale and then spouted profanities in a college office. Now Macias is looking at a charge of misdemeanor grand theft with the possibility of jail time.
Harvard University has been accused of failing to cooperate with an investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice on its use of race in admissions. While such lack of cooperation with discrimination investigation was once the signature of universities fighting desegregation, it has now become something of a badge of honor for academics who are obstructing efforts to determine if students are being turned down based on their race, particularly Asian students.
Continue reading “Harvard Faces Federal Investigation Over Racial Discrimination In Admissions”
Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario, is the latest focal point for the growing free speech crisis on college campuses. University student Lindsay Shepherd, 22, teaches tutorials on language use for first year communications students in a class called “Canadian Communication in Context”. She showed brief clip featuring psychology professor Jordan Peterson who is against forced use of genderless and “made-up” pronouns. Shepherd said that the clip spurred a lively and beneficial discussion in the class. However, one student filed a compliant and now Shepherd is facing an investigation for creating a “toxic environment” for showing the clip without publicly denouncing the views expressed in the clip. It appears that the school’s motto, Veritas Omnia Vincit (“Truth Conquers All”), applies only to university sanctioned truth.
We have hit another milestone today with over 33,000,000 views. We are also expected to reach 35,000 followers on Twitter. That hardly makes us competition for the largest sites but it is still an impressive collection of people seeking a place for civil but passionate discourse on legal and policy issues of our time (and perhaps a few wacky stories). We often use these milestones to look at the current profile of the blog and its supporters around the world.
As always, I want to offer special thanks for our weekend contributors: Mike Appleton, Larry Rafferty, Darren Smith, Kimberly Dienes, and Cara Gallagher (particularly Darren who continues help up with periodic technical problems etc).
I particularly want to thank our regular commentators and readers. We try to keep this blog as an open forum with as little interference or monitoring of the comments as possible. Given our free speech orientation, we try not to delete comments and, for that reason, we are deeply appreciative of how most people avoid personal or offensive comments in debating these issues. We have had to delete a handful of comments with personal attacks or profanity but the number remains quite low for a blog of this size. The success of this blog is due to the fact that we offer something more than the all-too-common troll-driven, angry, and insulting commentary of the Internet. Thank you for voluntarily assuming restraint over the tenor and content of your comments. Continue reading “RES IPSA HITS 33,000,000”
The controversy continues to grow at Rutgers University after the school hired Mazen Adi as a lecturer in its Political Science Department. Adi’s former position was a spokesman for the regime of President Bashar al-Assad. Despite his work for this bloodsoaked mass violator of international law and human rights, Rutgers insisted that Adi’s expertise was in the areas of “international law and diplomacy.”
After removing the portraits of his white predecessors from the dining hall of Pierson College, Pierson College head Stephen Davis is now saying it was all a terrible misunderstanding. Davis earlier proclaimed the removal of the portraits in the interest of the “campus-wide conversations about diversity and inclusion in public art and representation.” All of the prior “Masters” were white. Now, after a backlash, Davis is saying that the portraits will be returned.
We previously discussed the case of Fresno State University Public Health Professor Dr. Gregory Thatcher recruited students to destroy pro-life messages written on the sidewalks and wrongly told the pro-life students that they had no free speech rights in the matter. As I stated earlier, I find it extraordinary that the university did not seriously discipline or terminate Thatcher, but he still remains on the faculty. A district court has now ordered Thatcher to pay $17,000 and undergo First Amendment training. However, Thatcher remains defiant and the university appears complicit in his actions by the lack of disciplinary action.
As in prior years, Professor Luna Turley (shown here with adoring students) appeared as a visiting scholar yesterday to teach the Torts class on animal liability at GW Law School. To the chagrin of the assigned professor, she was generally viewed as a significant improvement as she showed the basis for determining domestication or wild characteristics in animals.
Continue reading “Professor Luna Teaches Animal Liability At GW Law To Universal Acclaim”
We recently discussed the growing concerns over academics using “progressive stacking” where teachers like Stephanie McKellop avoid calling on white males in class. One of the most cited supporters of progressive stacking is Professor Jessie Daniels at the City University of New York’s Hunter College. Daniels is back in the news with highly disturbing comments about white people and their families.
Continue reading “Hunter College Prof: White Families Foster White Supremacy”
Two universities this month were embroiled in alleged racist incidents that led to campus alerts and national controversy. It turns out however that the “victims” at both the Air Force Academy and Kent State were actually the aggressors in the creation of racist hoaxes. The incident at the Air Force Academy led to an angry speech by Lt. Gen. Jay Silveria, who ordered all 4000 cadets to stand at attention as he railed on the racist or racists in their ranks.
I will be speaking today at a conference at Yale as part of the annual William F. Buckley Jr. Program. The conference is on “The Constitution and the Courts: Challenges, Opportunities, and the Future of Freedom.” My specific panel addresses “Judicial Confirmations and Interpreting the Constitution: Borking, Activism, and Originalism.”
Speakers at the conference will include former U.S. Senator Kelly Ayotte, Randy Barnett, Carlos Eire, E. Donald Elliott, David French, Mollie Hemingway, Michael McConnell, Judge William H. Pryor, Jr., Nicholas Rosenkranz, Peter Schuck, Ilya Shapiro, Jonathan Turley, Ed Whelan, and Adam White.
Professor Joseph Mifsud has been described as a “Russian stooge,” a “KGB cutout,” and an intelligence handler. Not since Sir Arthur Conan Doyle created the character of Professor James Moriarty as the nemesis of Sherlock Holmes has an academic emerged as such a shadowy and sinister figure. Mifsud however has gone public to declare that his apparent love for one of the world’s most bloodsoaked authoritarian figures, Vladimir Putin, has left him with a clear and clean conscience. What is clear is that the Lond-based Mifsud had no qualms in serving as a conduit for dirt on Hillary Clinton and an effective asset of the Putin regime.Continue reading “Academic Or Asset? Professor Emerges From Shadows Of The Russian Investigation”
I have previously written about my concerns in the removal of statues and names from public buildings due to contemporary views of historical figures like George Washington. For that reason, it should come as little surprise how I view the decision of the current congregation of Christ Church in Alexandria to a memorial plaque to George Washington. I once lived near the church and occasionally went to services there. including the funeral of our late Associate Dean Admiral John Jenkins. It is a thrill to sit in a church that once served Washington and others. It is deeply disappointing to see the congregation now reject that long history in the removal of a plaque placed on the church in 1870. The reason offered below by church leaders is that the plaque made people feel unwelcomed or threatened because Washington was a slave owner.