Tag: universities

Disney’s Kermit the Frog Invited as Commencement Speaker at University of Maryland

Famed Sesame Street puppet Kermit the Frog has been scheduled as the 2025 commencement speaker for the University of Maryland, reports say.

Jim Henson’s popular puppet character debuted during a local TV series in Washington D.C. in 1955 and later on Henson’s popular kids’ show, Sesame Street — before breaking out as the star of The Muppet Show. Henson, who died in 1990 of streptococcal toxic shock syndrome, graduated the university in 1960.

The university published a biography of their puppet speaker, claiming Kermit is an “environmental advocate, a Peabody Award Winner, best-selling author, and international superstar,” according to CBS News.

“I am thrilled that our graduates and their families will experience the optimism and insight of the world-renowned Kermit the Frog at such a meaningful time in their lives,” UMD President Darryll Pines said in a statement. “Our pride in Jim Henson knows no bounds, and it is an honor to welcome Kermit the Frog to our campus, 65 years after Mr. Henson graduated from the University of Maryland.”

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The Hate Group Helping Trump Deport Israel’s Critics

A far-right, pro-Israel group with a history of support for terror and genocide is working closely with the Trump administration, preparing dossiers on thousands of pro-Palestine figures it wants deported from the United States.

Betar U.S. is known to have had several meetings with senior government officials and has claimed credit for the arrest and detention of Mahmoud Khalil, a leader of the nationwide anti-genocide student demonstrations that began at Columbia University last year.

Ross Glick, the group’s executive director until last month, noted that he met with a diverse set of influential lawmakers, including Democratic Sen. John Fetterman and aides to Republican Senators Ted Cruz and James Lankford, and that all supported Betar U.S.’ campaign to rid the country of thousands of “terror supporters.”

Shortly after Glick’s trip to Washington, D.C., Trump signed an executive order titled “Additional Measures to Combat Anti-Semitism” that promises “the removal of resident aliens who violate our laws,” to “quell pro-Hamas vandalism and intimidation” and to “investigate and punish anti-Jewish racism in leftist, anti-American colleges and universities.”

Trump himself announced that Khalil’s arrest, which made worldwide headlines, was “the first of many to come.”

“We know there are more students at Columbia and other Universities across the country who have engaged in pro-terrorist, anti-Semitic, anti-American activity, and the Trump administration will not tolerate it,” he wrote on Truth Social.

The 45th and 47th president has also stated that he plans to deport “Communists” and “Marxists” from the United States, even those who are citizens. As such, this marks an escalation in government-backed suppression of dissent not seen since the McCarthyist era of the 1940s and 1950s.

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TX State Rep Exposes Government Promoting Radical Transgender Madness At University Of Texas

Republican Texas State Representative Brian Harrison posted a thread on 𝕏 Tuesday, detailing and providing images of the far-left LGBTQ indoctrination taking place on the University of Texas at Austin campus.

Harrison wrote, “The Texas government hosted a transgender conference at @UTAustin today… so, naturally, I snuck in. What I found will shock you. The Texas Government is promoting a radical, liberal agenda… with your tax dollars.”

Harrison provided pictures showing a large banner on campus promoting a gallery showcase titled, “TRANSCENDENCE: A Century of Black Queer Ecstasy.”

An agenda list for an event on campus showed discussions such as “Keeping Time: Queer-Crip Temporal Attunement Through Tarot,” and “Digital Healing: from individual survival to collective care-reimagining workplace health in Chinese women’s literature.”

Another talk students could attend focused on “Abolition pedagogy and women’s health in a Texas women’s prison.”

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Wife of Activist Trump Wants to Deport Just Tried to Blow Up the Whole Case Against Him

Mahmoud Khalil, the Columbia University anti-Israel activist whom the Trump administration has targeted for deportation, has become a darling of the left, as people who hate America so often do. The New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU) claimed Friday that Khalil’s arrest “has created a speech-chilling atmosphere of fear” and charges that “the Trump administration’s actions represent a dangerous escalation of the president’s attempts to choke off the free speech rights of people on American soil.” And on Sunday, Khalil’s wife attempted to blow up the entire case against him, asserting that it was “ridiculous” and “disgusting” to say that Khalil supports Hamas.

This is all-important because if Khalil is found to be a Hamas supporter, the case against him would be nearly open and shut. U.S. Code § 1182 states that “any alien” who is “a representative” of “a political, social, or other group that endorses or espouses terrorist activity” is “inadmissible.” U.S. Code § 1227 adds that such an alien “is deportable.” The Associated Press described Khalil two weeks ago as one of the “student leaders of Columbia University Apartheid Divest” (CUAD). The Washington Post reported last Tuesday that “No one disputes that Khalil was the face of Columbia University Apartheid Divest.” 

Khalil was CUAD’s chief negotiator with Columbia administrators. Politico explained: “Khalil was a lead negotiator representing the student protesters to the Columbia administration during the school’s ‘Gaza Solidarity Encampment’ last spring. The student group behind the encampment — Columbia University Apartheid Divest, or CUAD — had two main demands: that Columbia cut all its ties to Israel, including divesting and halting plans to build a ‘global center’ in Tel Aviv, and that the protesters themselves receive amnesty for their actions.” 

However, apparently aware of how damaging that fact is to his case, Khalil himself disputes this. The BBC framed Khalil’s connection to CUAD as if it were merely something his opponents claimed: “Activists supporting Israel have accused Mr Khalil of being a leader of Columbia University Apartheid Divest (Cuad), a student group that demanded, among other things, the university to divest from its financial ties to Israel and a ceasefire in Gaza. Mr Khalil has denied that he led the group, telling the Associated Press (AP) that he only served as a spokesperson for protesters and as a mediator with the university.” 

It’s easy to see why Khalil would want to distance himself from CUAD. In August 2024, it posted this on Instagram, then removed it once it started getting appalled notice from saner quarters: “We are Westerners fighting for the total eradication of Western civilization.” During the anti-Israel protests at Columbia, the demonstrators screamed “Death to America.”

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Ivy League university webinar says science is too male, too hetero, and too fetus-centric

According to a recent article on thecollegefix.com, during a recent online event at Cornell University, feminist ‘scholars’ discussed their concerns about science being too male, too “hetero,” and too “feto-centric.”

Really.

The presentation, titled, “Is Fat Female? Evolution, Feminism, and Getting the Story Right,” featured scholar ‘Cat’ Bohannon and philosophy Professor Kate Manne. (Bohannon is the author of the best-selling book “Eve: How The Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Evolution.”)

During the Cornell Keynotes webinar, Bohannon stated: “The male norm is a thing that we are trying to fix from the ground up right now in biological and biomedical research.”

You’re trying to fix the “male norm?” Can’t have that! Anything most males do can’t be right!

To that end, Professor Kate brought up research that has allegedly been done on elephants’ sexual activities. She claimed that when male and female elephants mate for the purpose of producing offspring, “it’s very fast,” yet when the males are alone together for long periods of time, some will “form these tightly, intimately-bonded relationships and have penetrative sex for up to an hour.” (I don’t even want to know what they are penetrating in the latter example, but it can’t be that good if they can do it for an hour non-stop.)

Bohannon went on to aver that “It’s hard to say whether or not your basic wild elephant is straight,” adding, “Who knows what sexuality is exactly for animal friends, but animals are very queer.”

Objection! Projection! If animals were “very queer” there would be no more animals. There would have been a universal extinction event.

But Bohannon wasn’t satisfied just grousing about traditional, straight human males, no, siree. She also flatly stated that society has been too “feto-centric,” or centered on the fetus.

The Nutty Professor confessed that she worries about the “feto-centric view where our babies matter more than our girls.”

Not done yet, Bohannon bemoaned her belief that society has a poor view of fat, particularly the fat clinging to women, and claimed that new understandings about the different types and functions of fat in the body suggest that fat is actually an organ, ergo removing it via liposuction –- or dieting while pregnant — can be harmful to women and their unborn babies. (Though the latter concern sounds oddly feto-centric to me.)

Bohannon was apparently asked how one could avoid “transphobia while centering female bodies,” to which she replied by saying research should include representative samples of the population in clinical trials while lamenting that “quite a lot” of clinical trials “continue to be white.” Moreover, she said researchers should be specifically studying “transgender females” (biological males).

To recap: males are bad. Straight males are worse. Babies are bad. Fat can be good.

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Trump Administration Weighs Sanctions on Foreign Funders of Pro-Hamas Campus Protests

The Trump administration is mulling plans to sanction the international funders behind pro-Hamas protests, including prominent Qatari nationals who have vast financial holdings inside the United States, current and former U.S. officials familiar with the internal discussions told the Washington Free Beacon.

The effort seeks to build upon President Donald Trump’s January executive order authorizing the deportation of foreign students engaged in often illegal anti-Semitic demonstrations on college campuses across the country. Instead of targeting the protests’ participants, it would target their funders. The administration could, for example, slap sanctions on foreign individuals who provide groups like Students for Justice in Palestine with significant funding. In cases where those individuals enjoy U.S. visas, it could revoke them.

“President Trump has made it a priority to ensure that Jewish students, indeed all students, feel safe and free from harassment on college campuses,” one senior U.S. official, who spoke on background to discuss the ongoing deliberations, told the Free Beacon. “To that end, his administration is taking a comprehensive approach, not just looking at the visas and green cards of student instigators, but also, for example, going after the people funding the protests, wherever they may be.”

The plans reflect a growing appetite inside the administration to hamstring Hamas’s allies in the United States by penalizing their most prolific funders, including several former Qatari officials known to maintain relations with the Iran-backed group. Iranian government actors have also funded anti-Israel protests in the United States, former director of national intelligence Avril Haines revealed last summer.

Some officials within the Biden administration discussed similar plans to cut off foreign funding or the protests, according to a former U.S. diplomat involved in the efforts both then and now, who said the administration shelved the plans so as not to upset Doha’s government as it mediated peace talks between Israel and Hamas.

“This was on the menu when I was there, but the previous administration was a bit squeamish about taking extreme measures, like revoking visas,” said the diplomat. “But that’s not a problem in this administration, and we’re hearing they’re looking at all options—from sanctions on individuals to the revocation of visas.”

“You can’t get rid of anti-Semitism on campus without getting rid of the funding, and the funders are Qatar.”

The Trump administration has already taken similar action when it comes to America’s southern border. In early March, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced visa restrictions on “foreign government officials, including immigration and customs officials, airport and port authority officials, and others believed to be responsible for knowingly facilitating illegal immigration to the United States.” Less than two weeks later, Rubio restricted visas for current and former government officials complicit in China’s genocide of the Uyghur minority population.

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Students push back against law school’s WILD woke agenda

Macquarie University law students have condemned their course’s growing ideological focus, revealing they have been pressured to perform a “privilege walk” and adopt personas to understand power and status. They say their education has been hijacked by political activism, with a key course convenor now doubling down on controversial assessment criteria.

Holly Doel-Mackaway, convenor of the elective Age and the Law course, defended the requirement for students to perform an Acknowledgment of Country as part of their assessment. She reportedly said on Wednesday that those who failed to deliver a suitable proclamation would “not meet the metric or rubric.”

Students have pushed back against what they see as a politicised curriculum, with one saying they felt pressured to “express an opinion that I don’t truly believe in.”

A former honours student, speaking anonymously, told The Australian that students were required to deliver an “exceptionally thoughtful and respectful Acknowledgement of Country or Welcome to Country” as part of their thesis presentation, taking up around 30 seconds of their three-minute speech. The student said this had no connection to their thesis subject.

Doel-Mackaway reportedly told students that the requirement was about “acknowledging your positionality as a student of law on this unceded land.”

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In Internal Documents, Columbia Grad Student Union Spells Out Demands for ‘Sanctuary Campus’ Free From Public Safety Patrols and Protest Records

Columbia University’s graduate student union is demanding the Ivy League institution establish a “sanctuary campus” where public safety officers are barred from patrolling “organizing spaces, including classrooms.” The union, which is embroiled in active contract negotiations with Columbia, also wants the school to provide free “legal support” for student visa holders, destroy “all records” related to campus protest participants, and sue the Trump administration “and other anti-immigrant actors.”

Student Workers of Columbia, which boasts roughly 3,000 members and is affiliated with the United Auto Workers, shared an internal document outlining the demands during a Saturday Zoom meeting, which the Washington Free Beacon attended. The document, written by a “working group” of the union’s international members, cites the “unprecedented detainment of former student-worker Mahmoud Khalil by the Department of Homeland Security while in a Columbia University apartment building and the ongoing presence of ICE around campus” before making “immediate demands of Columbia University.”

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Trump Pulls $175 Million in Federal Funding from UPenn After They Defied His Order on Transgenders in Women’s Sports

President Trump has suspended $175 million in federal funding from the University of Pennsylvania after they defied his order on transgenders in women’s sports.

The prestigious Ivy League university is currently in violation of Title IX, which prohibits the sending of federal funding to universities or organizations that allow biological men to compete against women.

The news was first reported by Fox Business:

A senior administration official told FOX Business that the administration has paused $175 million in federal funding.

This did not account for UPenn’s total federal funding, which the university previously reported last year was around $1 billion.

The pause is not a direct result of the investigation into UPenn, which the Department of Education announced a day after the president signed the “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports” executive order on Feb. 5.

UPenn made headlines in 2022 after placing Lia Thomas, a biological male identifying as a transgender woman, on the women’s swim team.

Thomas went on to win a national title in the women’s 500-yard freestyle, edging out female competitors over whom she had a clear biological advantage.

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Suspended for Pro-Palestine Speech: My Statement on Yale Law School’s Embrace of AI-Generated Smears

The following statement was originally published on Helyeh Doutaghi’s account on the X platform on March 12, 2025. Last week, Doutaghi was placed on administrative leave by Yale Law School following an AI-generated article falsely accusing her of being a “terrorist” over connections to Palestine advocacy organizations.  (Reprinted from Mondoweiss.)

My name is Helyeh Doutaghi. I am a scholar of international law and geopolitical economy. My research engages with Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL), postcolonial critiques of law, and the global political economy of sanctions. I have specifically examined the mechanisms and consequences of economic warfare on Iran, as well as the forms of knowledge produced in International Humanitarian Law (IHL) to obscure and shield U.S. military operations from accountability. On October 1, 2023, I was appointed Deputy Director of the Law and Political Economy (LPE) Project and joined the team. I also held the position of Associate Research Scholar at Yale Law School (YLS), a non-tenured faculty role without teaching responsibilities.

On the morning of March 3rd, I was notified of an online report about me. An obscure AI-powered right-wing Zionist platform called “Jewish Onliner” published a report falsely accusing me of being a “terrorist”. Rather than defend me, the Yale Law School moved within less than 24 hours of learning about the report to place me on leave.

I was given only a few hours’ notice by the administration to attend an interrogation based on far-right AI-generated allegations against me, while enduring a flood of online harassment, death threats, and abuse by Zionist trolls, exacerbating ongoing unprecedented distress and complications both at work and at home. I endured all of this while fasting, and my request for religious accommodations during Ramadan was dismissed. Just a few hours later, YLS placed me on leave, revoked my IT access – including email – and banned me from campus. I was afforded no due process and no reasonable time to consult with my attorney.

Rather than investigate the source of these allegations first, the nation’s “top law school” accepted them at face value, and shifted the burden of proof from the accuser to the accused, treating me, prima facie, as guilty until proven otherwise. Whether Yale Law School’s attorneys knowingly relied on AI-fabricated claims or simply chose willful ignorance remains unanswered.

To conduct the interrogation, Yale Law School retained David Ring from the law firm Wiggin and Dana – an attorney whose public profile includes “Israel” listed as a “service” he provides and whose portfolio boasts advising “the world’s largest aerospace and defense companies.” Twice appointed by the U.S. State Department as a Special Compliance Officer, his career is deeply embedded in the very industries that sustain genocide and war crimes in Palestine. When I raised my concerns about the potential conflict of interests posed by his participation in this process, YLS dismissed them, stating there was “no concern with his ability to conduct a fair interview.” It is reprehensible that YLS would appoint a counsel who profits from the machinery of Palestinian death to “interview” an employee about their public anti-genocide and pro-Palestine positions.

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