Tag: universities

University to remove World War II murals because they show too many white people

The University of Rhode Island recently announced plans to remove two murals depicting World War II veterans because it lacks “diversity and a sensitivity to today’s complex and painful problems,” according to the university.

Kathy Collins, vice president of student affairs, told CBS 12 she received complaints because the two folk-art murals portraying life in the GI Bill era of the 1950s “portray a very homogeneous population” and that most of the people depicted in the murals are “predominantly white.”

Collins also told the CBS news affiliate that some students told the school they “didn’t feel comfortable sitting in that space.”

She cited the controversial deaths and shootings of black Americans such as George Floyd and Jacob Blake as part of her decision:

I think we have to recognize the horrible incidents and the tragic murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and most recently Jacob Blake in Kenosha Wisconsin during this is heightened time and we as an institution have to look at the systems in place across this institution that maybe are not representing who we are today and representing the true diversity of URI today.

The public university announced the plans to cover up and replace the murals in the school’s Memorial Union in a September 3 news release. The murals are currently covered up and the school said it wants the paintings replaced before classes start. The student union is currently undergoing renovations.

At the request of the university, Arthur Sherman, a World War II veteran and alumnus of the university, painted the murals depicting students socializing and traveling to campus in 1953.

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‘Ghost students’ continue to steal millions in financial aid from California community colleges, report says

“Ghost students” continue to steal millions in financial aid from the California Community College System despite efforts to stop them, a new report finds.

While Secretary of Education Linda McMahon said there is $1 billion in fraudulent financial aid paid out to the scammers, who might use bots to enroll and participate in class, the number is likely much larger according to a professor interviewed by Open the Books and The College Fix.

Kim Rich, a criminal justice professor at Pierce College, said she determined half of the students in her classes are fake.

Rich told The Fix that she has tried “to stop this fraud in its tracks for the past four years,” but she doesn’t “feel like [she’s] anywhere closer.” She previously spoke to The Fix in 2022 after determining about 36 percent of the students of newly-issued student ids were fake just from one week period at her college. She regularly comments on the problem of fake students.

In the spring 2025 semester, according to the Open the Books report, 24 students in Rich’s 40-student class were fake. Rich estimated that if just one ‘ghost student’ were enrolled in each of the 4,000 online classes offered in Los Angeles community colleges per semester, the nine schools in the county would lose a combined $20 million per semester.

Referencing the expected ID verification mandate the chancellor’s office planned to implement on Oct. 30 Rich told The Fix that she is “not very confident it will solve the problem or even reduce the instances of financial aid fraud, mainly because none of the other efforts or millions of dollars they have spent to remedy this issue have.”

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Police Hunting For Diseased Primate …Armed With An STD And Dangerous!!!

Mississippi’s got one wild situation — a hostile STD-carrying monkey busted loose from a large trailer truck hauling primates after the semi flipped over on a highway, according to police.

The wreck went down Tuesday in Heidelberg, where the truck, containing several monkeys infected with hepatitis C, herpes, and COVID, crashed en route from Tulane University to a Florida testing lab.

Cops say six monkeys made a break for it — but five were destroyed, and one’s still on the loose. Witnesses shot camera footage that captured the surviving monkey climbing out of the trailer and wandering around in a rural area.

Police warned the public the monkey is super aggressive toward humans. Translation: if you see a monkey on the run, don’t approach it… just call 911.

Mississippi wildlife officials and local cops are already out trying to nab the furry baboon, but can’t seem to find the chimp anywhere.

As for Tulane University, officials tell us — despite what the cops say — the primates in question belong to another entity and are “not infectious,” meaning they don’t have diseases. They add, “We are actively collaborating with local authorities and will send a team of animal care experts to assist as needed.”

TMZ also reached out to Tulane National Biomedical Research Center … so far, no word back.

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What is mirror life? Scientists are sounding the alarm

Scientist Kate Adamala doesn’t remember exactly when she realized her lab at the University of Minnesota was working on something potentially dangerous — so dangerous in fact that some researchers think it could pose an existential risk to all life forms on Earth.

She was one of four researchers awarded a $4 million US National Science Foundation grant in 2019 to investigate whether it’s possible to produce a mirror cell, in which the structure of all of its component biomolecules is the reverse of what’s found in normal cells.

The work was important, they thought, because such reversed cells, which have never existed in nature, could shed light on the origins of life and make it easier to create molecules with therapeutic value, potentially tackling significant medical challenges such as infectious disease and superbugs. But doubt crept in.

“It was never one light bulb moment. It was kind of a slow boiling over a few months,” Adamala, a synthetic biologist, said. People started asking questions, she added, “and we thought we can answer them, and then we realized we cannot.”

The questions hinged on what would happen if scientists succeeded in making a “mirror organism” such as a bacterium from molecules that are the mirror images of their natural forms. Could it inadvertently spread unchecked in the body or an environment, posing grave risks to human health and dire consequences for the planet? Or would it merely fizzle out and harmlessly disappear without a trace?

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“We’re Living Through A Coordinated Sabotage Of Truth-Seeking Institutions”

“A civilization is defined by its ability to discern truth from falsehood,” writes ‘Camus’ (@newstart_2024) in a post on X.

So, what happens when every apparatus built for that purpose is systematically dismantled?

Bret Weinstein issues a stark warning: we are living through a coordinated sabotage of our truth-seeking institutions.

This is not a minor critique; it is a fundamental attack on the very mechanisms of a functional society.

He argues that the assault is comprehensive:

  • The University System: Once a beacon of knowledge, now a source of unreliable research and curricula that teach verifiably false concepts as truth. The cornerstone of academic rigor has been cracked.
  • Regulatory Agencies: These bodies have been inverted. Their purpose is no longer to protect citizens from harm, but to protect the regulators and the system from the citizens they are meant to serve.
  • Scientific Integrity: We are left grappling in the dark on critical issues. Determining something as scientifically straightforward as the potential link between mRNA vaccines and turbo cancers should be a matter of transparent data. Instead, we are forced to rely on buried anecdotes and studies designed to fail.

This is the realization of René Descartes’ deepest fear – that the very foundations of what we believe to be factual cannot be trusted.

We have been severed from the tools of the Enlightenment, left in a precarious state where anecdote replaces evidence and ideology replaces inquiry.

We are now navigating a world without a compass.

The predicament is not just dangerous; it is existential.

The question is no longer just “what is true?” but “how do we find out, when the paths to truth have been deliberately destroyed?”

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Here’s An Inside Look At The Radical Dogma Being Taught At The No. 1 Elementary Teaching School

“Even my teacher at the first day of class, she said, ‘everything is political,’ and I didn’t understand what she meant until I started doing the content.”

Adrianna Mobley should have been excited to be accepted to Michigan State University’s elementary education program, ranked the top elementary program in the nation. Excited, that is, until she stepped into her “Social Foundations of Justice and Equity in Education” class this fall. Required for all elementary education majors, the class dives deep into the demonization of free market principles, meritocracy, and American values.

Higher education isn’t a vacuum. Colleges of education and far-left teachers unions are known to push curriculum saturated in Critical Race Theory, breeding K-12 educators ready to pass the narrative to the next generation. It should be no surprise that 58 percent of K-12 teachers in America lean towards or identify with the Democrat Party, disproportionate to the 47 percent of the general public, Pew Data shows. A study of 2022 campaign contributions from the Educational Freedom Institute revealed that 68 percent of K-12 teachers and 93 percent of college professors donated to Democrat candidates or committees.

But how bad is it in the classroom? Take the course mentioned above from Michigan State University’s supposedly top-ranked elementary education program. It’s described on MSU’s website as “understanding self, schools, and society; emphasizing racial justice, equity, and social identity markers.”

According to Mobley, the course materials and conversations have a constant focus on race and a consistent dismissal of capitalist principles unlike anything she had experienced. “As somebody who’s grown up in the school system … I don’t remember anything like this happening before,” Mobley told The Federalist. 

Course materials shared by Mobley show that one of the class units included an interview with activist and educator Angela Davis, formerly an official member of the Communist party and collaborator with the Black Panther Party.

“Racism is integrally linked to capitalism,” Davis said in the video, “and I think it’s a mistake to assume that we can combat racism by leaving capitalism in place.”

“This is a period during which we need to begin that process of popular education which will allow people to understand the interconnections of racism, heteropatriarchy, capitalism,” the video concludes. It would seem that MSU agrees.

In a class assignment, Mobley referenced an article from The Federalist arguing that a system has no moral agency, and thus “systemic racism” is a misnomer skirting the actual problem in legitimate instances of racism – people.

In response, Mobley’s professor (LinkedIn pronouns listed as “she/they”) argued that “Systems are in place and gain traction over time, momentum which builds into norms. Therefore there ARE operators constantly putting forth the systems which we see as normal – it’s us!” 

She went on to reply to Mobley that “if we’re teachers going about our business as usual in a school which perpetuates inequitable outcomes for students of color or low-income students, we are … perpetuating those inequalities,” according to assignment records Mobley shared with The Federalist.

Another required video claims that “America can never be a meritocracy” until it provides “an equal starting point and equal resources.”

After one class discussion, Mobley’s professor asked to speak with her. “She told me that it seems like I’m going to have a really hard time. It was kind of like pushing me, almost, to think that I wasn’t going to do well, or it was going to be too difficult for me because I had opposing views,” Mobley told The Federalist.

Mobley told The Federalist that her professor has not been hostile toward her. However, her professor did warn her that the tone taken in Social Foundations of Justice and Equity in Education was not unique to that class. 

“She said that this is a [recurring] theme throughout all of the teaching program. So Critical Race Theory and DEI are all concepts that elementary education is centered around,” Mobley told The Federalist. 

The Federalist asked MSU whether it supported the professor’s remarks advancing a narrative of systemic racism and asked whether the school supports using materials from a self-professed communist and former Black Panther Party collaborator to teach its students. The Federalist also asked whether the school agrees with the assessment that its education program is apparently so dependent on radical concepts like DEI and critical race theory that students with opposing viewpoints could have a hard time succeeding, but did not receive a response to the questions.

Other required classes in MSU’s elementary education sequence echo leftist ideology, including “Pedagogy and Politics of Justice and Equity in Education,” and three one-credit seminar classes titled “Justice and Equity.“ Mobley is enrolled in another required class, “Engaging Elementary Learners in Science: Culture and Equity. “

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Harvard Silent as Dean Defends Death Threats Against Trump

A Harvard dean defended death threats against Donald Trump and said “rioting and looting” are legitimate “parts of democracy.” Will the Ivy League institution sanction him? Even though the school is at loggerheads with the Trump administration, it’s looking the other way at this behavior.

The dean, Gregory Davis, is the “main liaison for students needing extra help achieving their academic and wellness goals” at Harvard University’s Dunster House. “Over the past two weeks,” the Free Beacon‘s Aaron Sibarium reports, “Over the past two weeks, conservative students at Harvard have unearthed a series of social media posts they say disqualify Davis for his position.” Chief among them: “I don’t – at all – blame people wishing Trump ill. … [F]uck that guy and [i]f he dies, he dies.”

Harvard has not commented publicly on the posts, and a spokesman for the school, Jonathan Palumbo, said he couldn’t discuss personnel matters. Davis has said the posts do not reflect his “current thinking or beliefs,” though it was kind of recently—June 2024—that he exhorted people to “hate the police.” Palumbo declined to comment regarding whether it was appropriate for a dean to legitimize calls for political violence.

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Northwestern University Can Toss Students Who Refuse To Complete Anti-Semitism Training, Judge Rules

Northwestern University can strip students’ financial aid, access to on-campus housing, and even their student status for refusing to complete a mandatory anti-Semitism training, a federal judge ruled Monday.

The ruling represents an early blow to the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) in the lawsuit it filed against Northwestern on behalf of the school’s Graduate Workers for Palestine, alleging the training violates federal civil rights law and bans “expressions of Palestinian identity.” The plaintiffs had asked the court for a temporary restraining order to stop the school from punishing students who boycotted the training while the case played out, but Judge Georgia Alexakis rejected that request.

“Because the plaintiffs have failed to meet their burden in this threshold inquiry, we do not move on to conduct a balancing of the harms,” Alexakis said, according to the student paper, the Daily Northwestern. “For that reason, I have to deny the motion.”

CAIR’s suit focuses on a training video produced by the Jewish United Fund that shows quotes from Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke alongside those from anti-Israel activists to make the point that “you can’t tell the difference.” CAIR, a terror-tied pro-Hamas group, argued the video “equates critical engagement with Zionism with anti-Jewish statements by the Ku Klux Klan” and discriminates against “the University’s Palestinian and other Arab students by branding their ethnic and religious identities, cultures, and advocacy for the rights of their national group as antisemitic and subject to discipline.”

Northwestern barred students who didn’t complete the training from registering for classes and gave them until Monday to view the video. After that, they would face escalating penalties, including the loss of financial aid, access to on-campus housing, and even the revocation of their student status, effectively booting them from the university and forcing them to reapply. Northwestern attorneys have identified 16 students who have not completed the training, the Daily Northwestern reported.

While rejecting CAIR’s request for a temporary restraining order, Alexakis cast doubt on the plaintiffs’ claims that Northwestern discriminated against them on the basis of race, essentially questioning whether they could win the case.

“I find that the plaintiffs have established irreparable harm, but I also find that the plaintiffs have failed to establish the likelihood of success on the merits of the claims that they advance,” Alexakis said. She noted students aren’t required to endorse the video to complete the training, let alone watch it—they could simply allow it to play until the end.

Elsewhere in the suit, CAIR alleges the “training course is replete with political commentary which restricts Northwestern students from advocating for Palestinian liberation, equal rights, an end to apartheid in Palestine, and for the rights of Palestine’s indigenous people (Jewish and non-Jewish).” The plaintiffs also described the spring 2024 Deering Meadow encampment as home to “nonviolent protest, display of signs, speeches, dancing, prayer and other overtly Jewish religious activities, and community building.”

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International Student from China Accused of Drugging and Raping Multiple Women on Campus

A Chinese national faces felony charges after he reportedly drugged and raped three women while enrolled at the University of Southern California.

Sizhe “Steven” Weng, 30, allegedly committed the crimes between 2021 and 2024 while pursuing his doctoral degree, according to a Wednesday news release published by the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office.

He was arraigned Sept. 2 and pleaded not guilty to all felony charges: one count of forcible rape; two counts of sodomy by controlled substance or anesthesia; one count of rape by controlled substance; and four counts of sexual penetration by controlled substance or anesthesia, according to the release.

“No one should ever have to endure the trauma of being drugged, sexually assaulted and stripped of their ability to consent,” Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan J. Hochman said.

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Rutgers Moves to Oust TPUSA Officers Who Challenged Antifa-Supporting Professor

The director for student involvement and leadership at Rutgers University is calling for the removal of two officers of the school’s Turning Point USA chapter, for their involvement in a petition calling for the removal of a professor nicknamed ‘Dr. Antifa.’

Karima Woodyard, Rutgers’ director of student involvement and leadership, wrote in an email obtained by Fox News Digital that both Megyn Doyle, the chapter’s treasurer, and Ava Kwan, its outreach coordinator, should be removed from their positions and replaced through new elections. Woodyard argued that both students were ineligible to hold their positions.

The chapter is already facing a petition on Change.org for its removal, which has been signed by at least one professor at the university. The petition as of Wednesday has well over 6,500 signatures.

“I wanted to bring to your attention that Megyn is a Newark student and Ava is a graduate student,” Woodyard wrote in the email directed to the Chapter President Stephen Wallace and Chapter Vice President Victoria Sorbat. “Because your organization is classified as an undergraduate student organization for the New Brunswick campus, both individuals are ineligible to hold executive board positions within your group.” 

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