Tag: universities

Professor sues Millsaps College after being fired for ‘racist fascist country’ email

A former Millsaps College professor is suing the institution, alleging his termination for describing America as a “racist fascist country” in an email to students was censorship. 

Professor James Bowley’s complaint, filed in September, alleges that the small Mississippi college breached his tenure and its founding tradition connecting faith to free speech. Bowley taught politics and religion at the college for more than 20 years.

“Millsaps fired a tenured professor because he expressed a political opinion in an email to three like-minded students in a political seminar,” the complaint claims.

However, college spokesperson Joey Lee told The College Fix that the institution is “confident” about defending its actions in the case.

“Millsaps College is dedicated to academic excellence and open inquiry. We are also committed to providing a safe and supportive campus for all,” Lee said in a recent email.

“Due to the pending litigation, we will not go into any further details at this time, but we look forward to the opportunity to tell the whole story,” Lee said. “We believe the facts will speak clearly, and we are confident in our position and in the legal process ahead.”

The college placed Bowley on administrative leave in November 2024. Almost a year later, in September, Bowley was terminated, according to the complaint. Initial reports said Bowley was fired in January, but Lee told The Fix that he was still on administrative leave at the time.

The controversy stems from an email Bowley sent to three students after the 2024 presidential election. Bowley wrote that he was canceling his “Abortion and Religion” class to “mourn and process this racist and fascist country.”

According to the complaint, Bowley’s decision was “rooted in compassion for the emotional distress that he knew his students were going through” due to the election of Donald Trump.

The lawsuit also argues that he was justified in sending the statement because the campus culture was tense after a Millsaps student threatened Kamala Harris voters in a YikYak post. 

Bowley claims that the college violated his tenure when it fired him. “The faculty member’s expression of unpopular political views is not ‘cause for dismissal,’” the lawsuit states. 

The complaint also highlights the Methodist background of the institution.

It quotes Methodist founder John Wesley: “The Methodists alone do not insist on your holding this or that opinion; but they think and let think . … Now, I do not know any other religious society, either ancient or modern, wherein such liberty of conscience is now allowed, or has been allowed, since the age of the apostles.”

The complaint argues that the college’s Methodist background is a foundation for academic freedom: “The requirement that all Methodist colleges respect academic freedom remains enshrined in policies set by the Church, stating that all ‘colleges and universities are to ensure that academic freedom is protected for all members of the academic community and a learning environment is fostered that allows for a free exchange of ideas.’”  

It also connects open inquiry and freedom of speech and expression: “Challenge and discomfort are essential at Millsaps.”

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DOJ sues California over in-state tuition, scholarships, subsidized loans for illegal immigrants

The Department of Justice filed a lawsuit against California over state laws that are “unconstitutionally” providing in-state tuition, scholarships and subsidized loans to illegal immigrants.

According to the DOJ’s lawsuit filed Thursday, California’s laws unconstitutionally discriminate against U.S. citizens by not offering them the same in-state tuition, scholarships and subsidized loans as illegal immigrants.

“California is illegally discriminating against American students and families by offering exclusive tuition benefits for non-citizens,” Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a statement. “This marks our third lawsuit against California in one week — we will continue bringing litigation against California until the state ceases its flagrant disregard for federal law.”

The lawsuit was filed in the Eastern District of California against the state of California, Gov. Gavin Newsom (D), state Attorney General Rob Bonta (D), and the Regents of the University of California, the Board of Trustees of the California State University, and the Board of Governors of the California Community Colleges.

The DOJ has filed similar lawsuits in other states, including Illinois, Kentucky, Minnesota, Oklahoma, and Texas, The Hill news outlet reported.

“The DOJ has now filed three meritless, politically motivated lawsuits against California in a single week. Good luck, Trump. We’ll see you in court,” a spokesperson for Newsom said.

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Some evidence appears to be missing in Charlie Kirk murder case: Report

Apublic records request with the Washington County Sheriff’s Office found that video footage of alleged Charlie Kirk assassin Tyler Robinson turning himself in no longer exists, a Utah news outlet reported Wednesday. 

Kirk, who is remembered for his staunch Christian faith and for founding the conservative grassroots organization Turning Point USA, was assassinated at a rally in Utah in September. Robinson has been charged with aggravated murder, two counts of obstruction of justice, witness tampering and commission of a violent offense in the presence of a child for Kirk’s death.

Washington County Sheriff Nate Brooksby told KUTV 2 News that Robinson was taken to his office days after the shooting, where he was greeted by two plainclothes detectives. But a public records request found that video showing Robinson entering the Washington County Jail and holding area no longer exists. 

“We do not have any records responsive to this portion of the request, as Tyler Robinson did not go to or enter the jail area,” a records officer with the sheriff’s office told the outlet. 

The outlet then filed another request a few weeks later that more broadly requested footage of Robinson walking into the department, which the sheriff’s office again said it did not have. 

“Our office does not have any applicable records responsive to this request, as the surveillance footage is no longer available after the 30-day retention period,” the officer said.

When asked whether the footage was ever shared with another law enforcement agency or department, the office said, “It is my understanding it was never sent out to any agency.”

Criminal defense attorney Rudy Bautista told the outlet that the office not having the footage was “concerning.” 

“For the state of Utah, we would certainly hope that this video is available,” Bautista said. “If, in fact, it has been destroyed and not preserved, it’s very concerning. And if it has, then it’s very concerning that they’re telling you they don’t have it. If they no longer have it, I would have expected to say that this video has been provided to the Utah County law enforcement.”

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Cal State Schools Require Students To Take DEI Classes To Graduate. Options Include ‘Queer Crip Lit’ and ‘Decolonize Your Diet.’

The University of California system made news earlier this year when it eliminated mandatory diversity statements for new hires. But at California’s other public university system, DEI isn’t in retreat—it’s required.

Nearly every California State University campus requires students to pass at least one diversity and cultural competency class, according to graduation criteria identified by Do No Harm, a group that opposes identity politics in medicine. The exact requirements vary across schools, but they typically prescribe a specific course or allow students to pick from a list of classes that “explore the interrelatedness and intersection of race and ethnicity with class, gender and sexuality, and other forms of difference, hierarchy, and oppression.”

San Francisco State University has among the most demanding criteria, requiring students to take courses in “areas that the campus feels are important to graduates”: American ethnic and racial minorities, environmental sustainability and climate action, global perspectives, and social justice. Some classes cover several requirements, like “Queer Crip Lit,” which examines “connections between ableism and other forms of discrimination, such as racism, sexism, classism, homophobia, and transphobia” in literary works. Another class that covers multiple requirements: “Decolonize Your Diet: Food Justice and Gendered Labor in Communities of Color” focuses on “food justice in communities of color addressing issues including sex/gender and food production, racism and attacks on traditional food systems.”

Some Cal State schools require students to take two DEI courses, one with a domestic focus and another centering on global issues. Students at the Humboldt campus can satisfy the domestic requirement with “Decolonizing Public Health,” which applies “decolonizing methodologies and anti-racism interventions to analysis of public health frameworks.” The options on the international side are more straightforward, though among the classes offered is “Sex, Class and Culture: Gender and Ethnic Issues in International Short Stories.”

Do No Harm senior director of programs Laura Morgan said the Cal State system “is all in on politicized propaganda.”

“These classes are based on concepts that have roots in critical race theory and promote ideology instead of sound learning principles,” Morgan told the Washington Free Beacon in a statement. “As a taxpayer-funded system, [Cal State] is obligated to prioritize education instead of operating a factory for politically indoctrinated activists.”

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Student at Oklahoma State University Reprimanded For Wearing TPUSA Hat

According to Campus Reform, “A student says he was reprimanded by a staff member after paying tribute to Charlie Kirk at an Oklahoma State University Student Government Association meeting.”

The student making the allegations is OSU junior John Wilson.

Wilson, the president of the OSU debate society, spoke at the meeting on Sept.10th after Kirk’s murder and delivered a speech honoring Charlie.  He is also a member of the student government association.

In his memorial speech, Wilson said Charlie was a father, a husband, a devout Christian, and a shining light for so many,” and that his assassination was “horrendous and vile, just as political violence of any kind is.”

Wilson, like Charlie, called for peaceful dialogue.

The coordinator of the SGA program was not happy about this despite the peaceful words.

According to a recording obtained by the Oklahoma Council of Public, the coordinator confronted Wilson.

She stated, “As a person who doesn’t look like you and has not had the same lived experience as you, I have family who don’t look like you who are triggered — and I will be very candid with you — who are triggered by those hats and by that side.”

In addition, she told Wilson he should, “ask others who don’t look like you and have open conversations with anyone that has a different lived experience.”

Wilson rightfully responded, “Idea and conversation is what built this country, and it’s what should maintain it. And that’s what the hat was there for.”

Wilson also said that her “identity-related arguments were moot because he has Native American ancestry.”

Wilson further claimed that the SGA coordinator stated, “It cannot just be, ‘yes, but’ – cannot be every response that you give me. Otherwise, this year is going to be difficult for you.”

These allegations are extremely serious. A patriotic college student should not be forced to defend his political beliefs or clothes, nor should he be forced to defend his memorializing of Charlie Kirk.

We will see if the school disciplines the coordinator or apologizes to Wilson.

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After Removing Statue Of American Hero, UVA Plans To Replace It With Massive Land Acknowledgement

After removing the statue of a famed Revolutionary War hero in 2021, the University of Virginia (UVA) plans to replace it with a park that will serve as a de facto land acknowledgement to an Indian tribe, The Federalist has learned.

The Federalist obtained the school’s plans for the site that once held the statue of Brigadier General George Rogers Clark, which indicate that the new park will celebrate “the Virginia landscape and Indigenous stewardship practices.”

“The politicization of the university has reached a level of absurdity as it has gleefully destroyed statues of Virginians,” Ann H. McLean, a lifelong Virginia resident who received her doctorate in art and architectural history from the University of Virginia, told The Federalist. “Rather than celebrating the courage and problem-solving of exploration represented by the George Rogers Clark sculpture, cultural Marxist city leaders and academics are choosing to celebrate those who had no written language, no concept of private property, no trial by jury, or many other improvements brought here by western civic life and Biblical practice.”

Charlottesville, Virginia, became ground zero for the left-wing drive to destroy American culture and history when the city decided to remove the statues of Confederate Civil War generals Robert E. Lee and Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson from their respective places in the historic downtown.

Clark was not a Confederate general, not that it should matter, but these leftists wanted to remove his statue anyway. Like President Donald Trump said in 2020, noting that the leftist movement wants to tear down our Founding Fathers as well, “They’re tearing down statues, desecrating monuments, and purging dissenters. It’s not the behavior of a peaceful political movement; it’s the behavior of totalitarians and tyrants and people that don’t love our country.”

It is a crime against Americans, and the people behind the removals — school leadership, city leadership, and everyone else — belong in prison for those crimes.

For most Americans, statue removal and the related Unite the Right rally are basically the only thing the city is known for at this point. That the city is also home to Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello or the university he founded is an afterthought.

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UC-San Diego Report Indicates Shocking Number of Students Entering College in California Lack 8th Grade Math Skills

A new report from the University of California San Diego indicates that a shocking number of students entering the University of California system lack the math skills one would expect from a middle school student.

Some of this can be blamed on school closures during Covid, but not all of it. At the end of the day, this is a failure of the schools and teachers that failed to impart these basic skills.

It’s also an excellent reminder that not everyone needs to go to college. If you can’t do high school level math, why should you even be considered?

Newsweek reported:

Students at California University Without 8th Grade Math Skills Skyrockets

A sharp rise in students entering the University of California system without middle school-level math skills is raising alarms among educators.

A new internal report from the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) reveals that the percentage of incoming students scoring below Algebra 1 on placement exams—a math course typically completed by the end of eighth grade—has tripled over the past five years.

Why It Matters

In 2020, just 6 percent of first-year students at UCSD placed below Algebra 1. By 2025, that number had surged to 18 percent, according to the UCSD Senate Admissions Working Group (SAWG) report.

The findings reflect a growing disconnect between high school transcripts and actual college readiness. The SAWG report links the increase to pandemic-era learning disruptions, long-standing inequities in California’s K–12 system, and the elimination of standardized testing requirements in UC admissions.

What To Know

The number of UCSD students requiring Math 2, a course originally designed for less than 1 percent of the incoming class, surged from under 100 students annually to over 900 by fall 2024.

This example of an easy question failed by many students is just stunning.

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One in FIVE students entering UC San Diego can’t write properly, new data reveals

Roughly one in five Americans entering UC San Diego cannot write at an entry level standard, a new report revealed. 

About 20 percent of incoming students to the California university had to be placed in analytical writing courses after failing to meet the requirements of a writing placement exam, which forced them into specialized courses called ‘AWP’.

The report published by a UC San Diego admissions committee added that writing skills and literacy are in decline across the entire US. 

According to the university’s faculty, freshmen students’ vocabulary was ‘increasingly’ limiting their ability to engage with longer and harder texts. 

As a whole, the school had seen a ‘steep decline in the academic preparation’ of its domestic freshmen students.

The November 6 report read: ‘Admitting large numbers of students who are profoundly underprepared risks harming the very students we hope to support, by setting them up for failure.’

One possible solution offered was ‘moving beyond GPA and course titles’ in high school to evaluate how ready students actually are for writing at a college level.

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DOJ Launches Investigation into UC Berkeley over Antifa ‘Mob Violence’ at TPUSA Event

The Department of Justice (DOJ) announced that it is investigating the University of California, Berkeley, a day after “mob violence” from Antifa protesters occurred outside of a Turning Point USA (TPUSA) event.

In a post on X, Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division Harmeet Dhillon shared a letter that was addressed to UC Berkeley Police Chief Yogananda Pittman. In the letter, Pittman was asked to “preserve all records” in her possession that are “relevant to the agency’s preparation, execution, and response to the Turning Point event held” at the campus on Monday, along with related protests.

“The @CivilRights Division, under @AGPamBondi’s leadership, has asked UC Berkeley Police to preserve all records regarding their response to the mob violence at UC Berkeley’s TPUSA event,” Dhillon said in her post. “Every American has the right to speak at and attend events without fear.”

The letter stated, in part, that the situation at TPUSA’s event “may implicate the University of California’s commitment to provide adequate security”:

The U.S. Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division has recently become aware of concerning incidents occurring on your campus at the University of California (UC), Berkeley on or about November 10, 2026. These events may implicate the University of California’s commitment to provide adequate security pursuant to a 2018 settlement agreement in Young America’s Foundation, et al. v Napolitano et al., U.S. District Court, Northern District of California, No. 17-02255. Our office previously opened investigations of the University of California System for potential violations of Title VI and Title VII based on other events. We will determine whether the events of November 10 should also be included in those investigations. We are also determining whether recent events provide a basis for additional investigation of violations of federal rights, including, without limitation, violations of the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution.

Dhillon’s letter also explained that the request to preserve all records related to the response to the violence at the TPUSA event, included but was “not limited to” all written or electronic communications from UC Berkeley Campus Police regarding the incident or TPUSA, “generally in the last year,” along with “minutes and communications of any pre-event planning either internal or with outside groups” relating to the event, among others.

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They Did It Again! CBS Affiliate Gets Scorched for Calling TPUSA Event Violently Disrupted by Antifa “Mostly Peaceful” Before Showing Footage of What Actually Happened

The corporate media literally copied their playbook from the BLM riots back in 2020 and applied it to last night’s TPUSA event in Berkeley, California, which Antifa terrorists invaded.

As The Gateway Pundit reported, a bloody fight broke out at a TPUSA event at UC Berkeley after Antifa terrorists crashed the gathering on Monday night. Antifa terrorists and other far-left protestors turned the TPUSA event into a war zone.

The confrontation erupted at around 4:30 PST. During one brawl, two men were seen fighting each other, one of whom had blood gushing from his face.

Local police had difficulty containing the agitators and were seen putting on shield masks and gathering batons.

In another fight, Antifa terrorists ripped the shirt off pardoned J6 protester Jon Mellis and burned his MAGA Hat while cops stood by and did NOTHING.

CBS News Bay Area reporter Amanda Hari, though, had a different take on what occurred last night.

She remarked on how “lively” agitators were while assuring viewers that the protest was “mostly peaceful.”

If this rings familiar, it should. While covering a BLM riot in Kenosha, Wisconsin, CNN’s Omar Jimenez called </> the incident “fiery, but mostly peaceful” while standing in front of burning cars set ablaze by the rioters.

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