Tag: universities

‘Cruel behavior’: Northwestern U. LGBT community triggered by obscure flag painted on rock

A red cross and a reference to a 15th century French duke has caused an uproar at Northwestern University as LGBT students and professors fear for their safety.

Around Jan. 6, someone painted a “Cross of Burgundy” and wrote “CHARLES THE BOLD DUKE OF BURGUNDY 10 NOV 1433 — 5 JAN 1477” over a “trans flag” on campus. Students regularly paint over “The Rock” with various messages.

Even though the first person to report the cross did not know what it meant,  she felt unsafe for her life. 

“Something felt really off, and that visual cue, especially on a memorial for a trans student, just felt like something was wrong up there,” Smith Yarberry told The Daily Northwestern. Yarberry is gender-confused, sometimes just goes by “S.” and uses “they” pronouns. Her real name is “Sofia.”

The flag caused an immediate reaction as Yarberry, a “sixth-year English Ph.D. candidate” who writes “erotic” poetry,” and other LGBT individuals and allies jumped into action.

“Concerned students and faculty worked together over email chains in the following days to research the markings and allusion to the duke of Burgundy,” the student newspaper reported. “Others reached out to Student Affairs separately to notify the University about the symbol.”

The “chevroned X,” “was adopted by a Spanish pro-fascist group in the 20th century,” the team of researchers concluded.

“It’s one thing to go repaint the entire rock white with a red (symbol) and take away the trans memorial,” Yarberry (pictured) told the student newspaper. “But to use the trans memorial as the backdrop for a symbol associated with Nazism and fascist ideologies, that is a very political statement.”

While Yarberry and others were painting over the X, “a student approached them and took responsibility for painting the cross.”

“[T]he student mostly defended the decision as solely expressing interest in the duke of Burgundy. The person did not identify themself,” the newspaper reported.

That was not enough for the aggrieved LGBT members and allies, some of whom connected it to their broader problems with Northwestern.

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‘She/They’ Research Scientist at the University of Washington Wishes Conservatives Dead for Daring to Ask Questions: “May There Be Tyler Robinsons for You All”

A research scientist, whose role at the University of Washington is ostensibly one that is grounded in scientific understanding, lashed out at a conservative for using a scientific argument against biological men in women’s sports, wishing “Tyler Robinsons” for all conservatives.

Tyler Robinson is the 22-year-old man from Utah accused of assassinating conservative activist and Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk on September 10, 2025, during an event at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah.

School choice advocate Corey DeAngelis shared a video on Facebook of an exchange with Brandi Kruse, an independent journalist, pressing Washington State Senate Majority Leader Jamie Pedersen about allowing biological men in women’s sports.

Kruse asked: “Can you acknowledge that there are biological differences between men and women that would give boys physical advantages over girls in athletics?”

Pedersen responded: “No, I don’t think I could say that definitively. I don’t have the scientific expertise to weigh in on that.”

Mara Maughan, a research scientist at the University of Washington who uses “she/they” pronouns, responded to DeAngelis’ post by wishing death on those who dare to question trans doctrine.  Maughan allegedly commented, “May there be Tyler Robinsons for you all.”

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DID WE LEARN NOTHING? NIH Funds Wuhan-Style Bat Lab at Colorado State University

It has been four years since the world was brought to its knees by a virus that many evidence-based reports now indicate leaked from a laboratory in Wuhan, China. You would think the federal government and the “experts” in the public health establishment would have learned their lesson.

You would be wrong.

Colorado State University (CSU) is moving full steam ahead with a massive, taxpayer-funded “Bat Resource Center.”

This new facility, which is bankrolled by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the very same agency that funded dangerous research in Wuhan, will import and breed exotic bats to experiment on them with deadly pathogens.

The facility is being touted by the university as a “critical resource” to study how bats carry viruses like Ebola, Nipah, and SARS-CoV-2 without getting sick.

According to documents uncovered by the watchdog group White Coat Waste Project, this isn’t just a simple animal shelter. It is a vivarium designed to house huge colonies of bats, the very same animals identified as the reservoir for the COVID-19 virus.

White Coat Project wrote on its website:

We’ve now revealed that the NIH is still eager to move forward with the project minus EHA; and gave CSU an additional $2.3 million to do so just two months ago.

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Federal court reverses release of Columbia Gaza activist Mahmoud Khalil

A federal appeals court has overturned a lower court’s decision that released Gaza activist Mahmoud Khalil from an immigration jail earlier last year. The step brings the federal government a step closer to deporting the activist.

In a 2-1 decision on Thursday, the appeals court did not rule on the removal of Khalil, but said the lower court that released him from immigration jail did not have jurisdiction in the case. “That scheme ensures that petitioners get just one bite at the apple — not zero or two,” the panel wrote, per the AP. “But it also means that some petitioners, like Khalil, will have to wait to seek relief for allegedly unlawful government conduct.”

Khalil, a graduate student at Columbia who was involved with the Gaza encampment that led to agitators in the encampment occupying Hamilton Hall. Khalil was detained in an immigration jail after being detained on March 8 last year. He spent three months in the jail until a judge in New Jersey ruled that his jailing was unconstitutional and ordered his release.

The Trump administration challenged the ruling as the federal judge was not in an immigration court, which usually decides cases for detention of illegal immigrants in the country as well as deportations. It is not clear if federal law enforcement will not seek to detain Khalil after the order from the lower court was overturned by the panel.

The majority opinion from judges Thomas Hardiman and Stephanos Bibas, both appointed by Republicans, wrote, “Our legal system routinely forces petitioners — even those with meritorious claims — to wait to raise their arguments. To be sure, the immigration judge’s order of removal is not yet final; the Board has not affirmed her ruling and has held the parties’ briefing deadlines in abeyance pending this opinion. But if the Board ultimately affirms, Khalil can get meaningful review.”

The reversal on the order comes as an appeals board in the immigration system is looking at an order that has set Khalil up to be deported from the country. The judge in the immigration case said that he could be deported to Algeria, where he is a citizen, or Syria, where he was born in a refugee camp. His attorneys argue he would be in danger if he returned to either country.

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Minnesota university continues to uphold ‘antiracist parenting’

A professor and her team are in the spotlight after it was found that their “antiracist parenting” research is funded by a nearly $600,000 grant. According to The College Fix, this is at the University of Minnesota, and that professor is Gail Ferguson.

AFN reported previously about how the university’s Culture and Family Life Lab warns of a “whiteness pandemic.” It gives so-called resources for individuals and parents to be antiracist and teach their children anti-racism. One of the key takeaways is “talking the antiracist walk goes hand in hand with talking the antiracist talk.”

Matt Lamb is associate editor of The College Fix.

“The idea of anti-racism in general is that you can’t just not be racist but that you have to actively be opposing racism. And this is from Ibram Kendi who has sort of gone to different universities,” says Lamb.

The research at the institution centers on “an antiracist parenting intervention for White mothers of young White children.” The center uses the acronym CARPE DIEM, which it says is short for “Courageous, Antiracist, and Reflective Parenting Efforts – Deepening Intentionality with Each Moment.”

“This research presupposes that white people — but also like babies, like kids because this is white parenting — that they are racist and that they need to be taught how to not be racist. This is, of course, being subsidized by taxpayers because this is a public university,” states Lamb.

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Fact-Checking All of the Mysteries Surrounding Donald Trump and Penn

t was, it can be said without fear of exaggeration, a day that will live in infamy. When President Donald Trump emerged from his mysterious one-on-one summit with Russian president Vladimir Putin in Helsinki in July of 2018, the respective visages and body language of the two world leaders could not have been further apart. The Russian president looked smug and sated, like a vampire with a bellyful of peasant blood; Trump looked like a man who’d just received a painful enema. Or, as grizzled, now-banished White House aide-de-camp Steve Bannon describes it in Siege, Michael Wolff’s decadent and depraved follow-up to 2018’s Trumpworld tell-all Fire And Fury, “like a beaten dog.”

Speculation within Trump’s inner circle was that Putin must have something on Trump. The pee tape? Evidence that Don Jr. tried to buy Hillary’s emails? His tax returns? Nah. As Bannon told Wolff, “nobody gives a fuck” about that stuff. But, he wondered, “What if they have his college transcript?”

Ahh, the college transcript. Trump famously graduated from Penn’s Wharton School in 1968 — a fact he reminds audiences of over and over again. (Per Penn’s student newspaper, the Daily Pennsylvanian, he publicly name-dropped Wharton 52 times between June 2015 and January 2018.) But despite all his humblebragging about that Wharton degree, Trump has never allowed his academic performance there to be made public.

“This was a major, major thing with Trump — that people might think he’s stupid,” Michael Wolff told me around the time of Siege’s publication earlier this summer. “The focus of that for Trump is the college transcripts, which are apparently terrible. I’ve spoken to friends of Trump from that time, and this was a guy that was obviously not interested in school and possibly never read a book in his life. For everyone that had known him then and years afterward, the assumption was that he had terrible grades, he was a lackluster student at best.”

In truth, Trump’s Wharton GPA is just one of many mysteries surrounding the 45th president’s relationship with Penn, Philadelphia’s most powerful private institution, which, unwittingly or not, helped unleash Trump on the world. Over the years, there have been rumors about how Trump might have gotten into Penn in the first place, and how much — or how little — he’s donated to the school as an alum. There are tales about Trump’s social life as a Penn undergrad — did he, in fact, have a fling with Candice Bergen? And there are stories — including one particularly juicy one — about the Penn careers of Trump kids Don Jr., Ivanka and Tiffany, all of whom followed in their old man’s red-and-blue footsteps.

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‘Queer food’ course at Boston U. explores what ‘polyamorous’ and ‘non-binary’ people eat

Boston University students can study the “ways in which language and behaviors around food both reinforce and challenge gender hierarchies and restrictive norms around sexuality,” in a “Food Studies” class.

“Food, Gender, and Sexuality,” helps students explore the concept of “queer food,” according to Professor Megan Elias. The university recently profiled the professor and her course, along with a book she helped write, titled “Queers at the Table: An Illustrated Guide to Queer Food (with Recipes).”

The professor (pictured) gave some examples of topics of discussion in her “food studies classes.”

Students might consider “how [their] food choice is representing [their] gender identity,” she said in an explanatory video produced by Boston U.

“How is that different if you’re gay? How is that different if you’re non-binary? How is that different if you’re polyamorous,” she asked.

All these questions help “disrupt kind of ideas about foods that really obscure human experience,” she said.

Queer food is not a new concept, according to Elias.

“Queer food has always been,” Elias said in an interview with the university’s Faculty Angle series. “Queer people have always been cooking, they have always been eating, they have always been part of the food landscape. And so to acknowledge that is really to show us a new way of thinking about food.”

“We really feel that talking about queer food is a way to disrupt ideas about food that really obscure [the] human experience,” she said further. “That is what we do in food studies—we use food to understand the bigger picture of human experience.”

Elias said she does not have a definition for what “queer food” is but wants “recognition” it exists.

“So, to understand that queer food has always been, that queer people have always been cooking, they have always been eating, they have always been part of the food landscape,” she said in the YouTube video.

“Gender norms” can infect the way people think about food and cooking, Elias said. For example, “the idea that there’s a ‘mom’s home cooking,’” is not inclusive because some homes don’t have a mom, she said.

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University Writing Center Rejected Proper English, Calling It “Linguistic White Supremacy”

There was a time when being a white supremacist meant something (for starters, that you were one in a million). Today, though, it appears that anyone can be a white supremacist. Why, all journalist Larry Elder had to do to become “the black face of white supremacy” was seek California’s governorship. And now all you need to do to become the linguistic face of white supremacy is uphold Standard American English (SAE).

That is, according to certain “intellectuals” — such as those at the Metropolitan State University of Denver’s (MSUD’s) Writing Center.

Yes, that’s right. Don’t dare tell students not to speak like a cross between Snoop Dogg and the rapist in the film Deliverance. Otherwise, you could be guilty of “anti-black linguistic racism.”

No, “Woke” Is Not Dead

Reporting on the story Monday, National Review (NR) wrote that MSUD’s writing center urged educators to dispense with SAE

in since-deleted materials published under its “Anti-Racist Practices for Your Classroom” guidance on the university’s website.

The writing center even rejected that SAE exists at all, and “fully support[s] students in using their English (whatever that may be) in communicating their thoughts and ideas,” according to a page that has since been removed from its website.

The center’s reasons for rejecting SAE include the assumption that there is a “correct” way to write, the implication that there is a “standard” when the United States does not have a regulating body, that SAE “is a social construct that privileges white communities and maintains social and racial hierarchies,” and that SAE privileges white society over other ethnicities.

Having gotten blowback, however, the university is now doing damage control. As NR also informs:

MSU Denver told National Review it is aware of the content and that it does not reflect the official policy of the university.

“The University has removed that content and is working with the Writing Center to review it to ensure alignment with the institution’s mission, values and academic best practices,” an MSU Denver spokesperson told NR. “MSU Denver remains committed to rigorous academic standards and preparing all students for success in life and careers.”

So that should be it for the story, right? Not exactly.

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Trump Administration SUES Virginia for Giving Illegal Aliens In-State Tuition While American Taxpayers Foot the Bill

The Trump administration has launched a sweeping federal lawsuit against the Commonwealth of Virginia, accusing state leaders of openly defying federal immigration law by granting illegal aliens discounted in-state college tuition while forcing American citizens from other states to pay dramatically higher rates.

In a civil complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, the Department of Justice argues that Virginia’s tuition scheme blatantly violates federal law and must be permanently shut down.

The lawsuit seeks declaratory and injunctive relief to block the enforcement of Virginia statutes that classify illegal aliens as state “residents” for tuition and financial aid purposes.

At the center of the case is a law passed in 2021 and effective since 2022, which allows illegal alien students who meet specific residency and high school graduation criteria in Virginia to pay in-state tuition regardless of their immigration status. They can also qualify for state financial aid.

Meanwhile, American citizens from neighboring states—or even military families temporarily stationed elsewhere—are forced to pay out-of-state tuition rates that can be tens of thousands of dollars higher.

The DOJ complaint states plainly that Virginia’s policy gives preferential treatment to illegal aliens over U.S. citizens, calling the practice “squarely prohibited and preempted by federal law.”

“In direct conflict with federal law, Virginia law permits an alien who is not lawfully present in the United States to qualify for reduced in-state rates and state-administered financial assistance based on residence within the state but does not make United States citizens eligible for such benefits without regard to whether the United States citizens are Virginia residents,” the lawsuit reads.

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Tinker, tailor, publisher, spy: how Robert Maxwell created the academic peer review system

Publication of research results, theoretical propositions and scholarly essays is not a free-for-all. As shown by the dogmatism around climate change and Covid-19, sceptics struggle to get papers in print. The gate-keeper is the peer-review system, which people take for granted as a screening process to ensure rigour in scientific literature.

But it is not always been that way. Until at least the 1950s, the decision to publish was made by the editors of academic journals, who were typically eminent professors in their field.

Peer review, by contrast, entails the editor sending an anonymised manuscript to independent reviewers, and although the editor makes a final decision, the reviews indicate whether the submission should be accepted, revised or rejected. This may seem fair and objective, but in reality peer review has become a means of knowledge control – and as we argue here, perhaps that was always the purpose.

You may be surprised to know that the instigator of peer review was the media tycoon Robert Maxwell. In 1951, at the age of 28, the Czech emigree purchased three-quarters of Butterworth Press for about half a million pounds at current value. He renamed it as Pergamon Press, with its core business in science, technology and medicine (STM) journals, all of which instilled peer review.

According to Myer Kutz (2019), ‘Maxwell, justifiably, was one of the key figures — if not the key figure — in the rise of the commercial STM journal publishing business in the years after World War II’.

Maxwell’s company stole a march on other publishers and its influence was huge. By 1959 Pergamon was publishing 40 journals, surging to 150 by 1965. By 1996, one million peer reviewed articles had been published. Yet despite the increase in outlets, opportunities for writers with analyses or arguments contrary to the prevailing narrative are limited.

Maxwell was instrumental to peer review becoming a regime to reinforce prevailing doctrines and power.

Back in 1940, Maxwell was a penniless 16 year-old of Jewish background, having left his native land for refuge in Britain. His linguistic talents attracted him to the British intelligence services. On an assignment in Paris in 1944 he met his Huguenot wife Elisabeth. After war ended in 1945 he spent two years in occupied Germany with the Foreign Office as head of the press section.

Four years later, with no lucrative activity to his name, this young man found the money to buy an established British publishing house. According to Craig Whitney (New York Times, 1991), Maxwell made Pergamon a thriving business with ‘a bank loan and money borrowed from his wife’s family and from relatives in America’.

But how was he able to acquire Butterworth Press, initially? A clue is given by a BBC video clip (2022) on Maxwell’s links to intelligence networks. While operating as a KGB agent in Berlin, he presented himself to MI6 as having ‘established connections with leading scientists all over the world’. According to investigative journalist Tom Bower, ‘unbelievably what he really wanted was for M16 to finance him to start a publishing company’.

This point is corroborated by Desmond Bristow, former M16 officer, who states that Maxwell asked the secret security service to finance his venture. Seven years after launching Pergamon Press, Maxwell moved into Headington Hill Hall, a 53-room mansion in Oxford, which he leased from Oxford City Council.

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