Tag: universities

AOC Pushes ‘Free’ College as Only Way to Rein in Runaway Cost of College Tuition

New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez pushed the idea of ‘free’ college during a recent event at Cornell University, saying that this is the only way to rein in the ridiculous cost of tuition these days.

It is worth mentioning that this event was called ‘Students vs. Billionaires Town Hall’ so even the name of the event sets up an adversarial relationship between students and wealthy people. The message is clear. Rich people are the bad guys.

It’s also important to point out that there is no such thing as ‘free’ college. Someone is going to pay for it, usually taxpayers.

Breitbart News reports:

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) suggested “tuition-free public colleges and universities” as part of an effort to “rein in” the increased costs at private institutions.

While speaking at a “Students vs. Billionaires Town Hall” event on Sunday, hosted by the More Perfect Union, Ocasio-Cortez was asked what her team and the Democratic Party are “doing to ensure that middle and low-income families can continue to afford a quality, higher education.” The question came as Cornell University “recently broke $100,000 a year for tuition.”

Ocasio-Cortez responded by expressing shock at the tuition number, stating that it was “far more than what many households make in a year in this country.”

The congresswoman explained that what a lot of colleges and universities “do with their funds is more of a real estate investment strategy, than an educational strategy.” Ocasio-Cortez continued to state that colleges and universities put a lot of the funds toward “new buildings, and facilities that are often marketed as luxury,” while the adjunct faculty is “barely paid a living wage” and the quality of education is going downhill.

Keep reading

Columbia professor wins award for book on ‘white paint’ being racist

Among the many woke winners of this year’s prestigious National Book Awards is a black Columbia University professor whose screed attacks “white paint” as racist.

Professor Wendy Walters’ new book, “A Dead White: An Argument Against White Paint,” claims that white paint is not the “neutral” architectural design element that it initially appears to be.

Instead, she “interrogates all that we have taken for granted about the substance that colors, or fails to color, the structures and objects that surround us—and what the collective impulse toward white paint can tell us about culture, politics, and individual desire,” the publisher’s description states, in part.

The idea for the book originated with the Ivy League professor’s “genuine and visceral dislike of white paint – a feeling that is at times overwhelming,” she explained in a 2021 video for Creative Capital Foundation on YouTube.

But Walters pushed back on the idea that her emotional response is “possibly irrational.”

“As I tried to understand why my response to white paint was so strong, I discovered numerous examples of the way that it figured into systems of erasure, exclusion, violence, and the masking of power in the social and natural world,” she said in the video.

Most of the examples she gave linked white paint to racism. 

In one, white supremacists splattered white paint outside the Rothko Chapel in Houston, Texas in 2018, and, in another, white paint was used to vandalize a 100th anniversary memorial gallery to the Tulsa race massacre in 2021. 

She also mentioned a rainbow crosswalk for “LGBTQIA+ persons” in New Brunswick, Canada being painted over with white paint in an “act of intolerance.”

“I hope to encourage the reader to think about how practices of decoration and adornment might allude to hidden narratives of power, whether or not they recognize them as being so,” she said in the video.

The publisher’s description of her work does not mention racism or white supremacy, and the book isn’t scheduled for release until October. 

However, in the 2021 video, Walters linked the book to her past writings about racism. According to her university bio, she “writes regularly about visual culture, political geographies, climate, and race and identity.” 

“A Dead White” is not the first to link white paint to racism, though.

Three years ago, Norway’s University of Bergen received a $1.2 million government grant to explore how white paint has contributed to white supremacy around the world, The College Fix reported at the time.

The “NorWhite” study focuses on whether the Norwegian-developed paint pigment titanium dioxide white helped advance white “as a superior color,” Fox News reported. 

Why such projects are deemed worthy of awards has a lot to do with the left’s capture of the arts and academia. As New York Times columnist Bret Stephens wrote on Tuesday: “Bluntly, the National Book Award has become a D.E.I. checklist: Only authors with preferred identities, preferred topics and preferred politics stand any realistic chance of winning.” 

Stephens mentioned Walters’ book as one example. Other winners, announced last week, include books about “queer” parenting and “Islamophobia in America.” 

The problem is not that moderates or right-leaning authors are no good. The problem is that they are being shut out and a broad range of topics and ideas are being ignored. 

Maybe Walters is a good writer. Maybe not. Her book isn’t available to the public yet. But this “everything is racist” bent is getting old and boring. Frankly, it’s lazy, too.

Pick something, anything: clean pantries, clowns, Mozart, capitalism, mathematics, milk, Taylor Swift (these are already taken, by the way). Then, argue that it’s racist, smatter in a few “lived experiences” and – voila! – book deals and major prizes. Repeat. Again, and again, and again.

And they wonder why so many Americans have developed a distaste for academia.

Keep reading

PETA Appears to Run Cover for Brutal Monkey Torturer After Obama-Appointed Judge Reverses Trump’s Harvard Funding Freeze

PETA has spent three years telling its donors that the “lights are out” on Harvard neurobiologist Margaret Livingstone’s cruel infant-monkey lab, but federal records say otherwise.

A new notice of funding, thanks at least in part to an Obama-appointed judge reversing President Donald Trump’s Harvard funding freeze, came just sixteen months after PETA toasted “the end of Margaret Livingstone’s career as tormenter of baby monkeys.”

NIH RePORTER still lists Livingstone as the contact principal investigator on a National Eye Institute award at Harvard Medical School with an award notice dated September 11, 2026, fiscal year 2026 funding of $850,148; a budget period running September 1, 2026, through August 31, 2027; and a project end date of August 31, 2028.

Livingstone was also awarded a new grant on April 17, 2025, with fiscal year 2025 funding of $576,474; a project start date of May 1, 2025; a subsequent award notice dated June 1, 2026, for fiscal year 2026 funding of $576,201; and a project end date of April 30, 2029.

PETA’s May 27, 2025, release claimed a “massive victory” and said funding for the baby-monkey experiments “has been terminated.”

A PETA news post updated May 28, 2025, said “the lights have finally gone out on Margaret Livingstone’s dark experiments on baby monkeys” and that the work was on Harvard’s list of canceled federal grants.

PETA2 told younger readers the same week, “the lights are finally out” and “NIH just pulled the plug.

NIH itself posted on May 29, 2025, that it had “terminated funding at Harvard University for studies that included sewing the eyes of young monkeys shut.”

Then, a Boston judge gave the money back.

On September 3, 2025, U.S. District Judge Allison D. Burroughs, an Obama appointee, granted Harvard summary judgment, vacated the administration’s freeze orders and termination letters, and barred the government from giving those letters any force.

The NIH termination letter dated May 6, 2025, was among the letters she set aside. The judgment vacated “all freezes and terminations of funding to Harvard made pursuant to the Freeze Orders and Termination Letters on or after April 14, 2025.”

The Daily Caller reported this week that taxpayer money is still moving through multiple Livingstone grants, including the new $850,000 award posted this month and a multi-year grant running through 2029.

PETA’s own description of the “maternal deprivation” horrors in Livingstone’s lab includes infant macaques taken from their mothers, some raised with only a cloth surrogate, some fitted with vision-distorting goggles or strobe-like conditions for months, some with eyelids sewn shut, some implanted with electrode arrays, and many later killed and dissected.

Former NIH Director Francis Collins privately called related maternal-deprivation work “third-rate,” according to the Daily Caller.

Keep reading

Trump Adds $174 Million to Black Colleges, ‘Engines’

The Trump administration is directing more than $174 million in additional funding to historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs).

Education Secretary Linda McMahon announced on Tuesday the one-time investment at the HBCU Summit at the White House, which brought together administration leaders, university presidents, and others.

“For nearly 200 years, HBCUs have been engines of opportunity in communities, advancing critical innovations and uplifting local industries across the nation,” McMahon said.

“This new investment will help ensure these vital institutions have the resources they need to continue delivering world-class education and to prepare students for success in a rapidly evolving economy.”

The award follows a one-time investment last year, bringing the combined total to more than $612 million in new funding to the schools in fiscal years 2025 and 2026.

Under Secretary of Education Nicholas Kent said the institutions remain central to higher education in the United States.

“HBCUs have helped shape the story of American education, and they will undoubtedly shape the future,” Kent said.

“These institutions of higher education remain central to our nation’s higher education ecosystem, fueling workforce development, driving economic growth in their communities, and cultivating leaders across sectors including STEM, education, public service, and business,” Kent said.

The department did not release a national breakdown of individual awards.

Sen. Katie Britt, R-Ala., released figures for her state, which she said received $21,259,618, the largest share.

Alabama is home to more historically Black colleges and universities, and historically Black community colleges, than any other state.

Among the Alabama schools, Alabama State University received $2,873,624, Alabama A&M University $2,831,147, Lawson State Community College $2,120,333, Tuskegee University $1,767,981, and Talladega College $1,516,171, according to Britt’s office.

“Alabama is home to some of the finest HBCUs and HBCCs in the nation, and the standard of excellence they produce makes these investments well-deserved,” Britt said.

The administration will also make a one-time award of more than $61 million in additional funding to Tribal Colleges and Universities (TCUs).

Keep reading

Rep. Nancy Mace Moves to Ban Lab Puppy Mills After White Coat Waste Tracks 1,500 Dogs Sent into Taxpayer-Funded Experiments

The animal testing watchdog organization White Coat Waste has published a new report showing that Oak Hill Genetics, an Ewing, Illinois, breeder and the nation’s second-largest lab-dog supplier, shipped 1,518 hound-mix dogs to 44 laboratories between January 1, 2025, and June 30, 2026.

Some of the animals were only about three months old.

Recipients included universities and contract labs that hold National Institutes of Health money.

Earlier this month, White Coat Waste’s spending review found more than $225 million in NIH awards for dog and cat experiments since mid-February 2025, including more than $98 million in new dog-testing money at pharmaceutical companies and $11.7 million in new cat work.

The lab list WCW obtained is specific.

The University of Utah took dogs for heart work that WCW says includes tied-off arteries, pacemakers, and electric shock before the animals are killed; Utah has drawn nearly $12 million for those studies and received 50 Oak Hill dogs in the 18-month window. Washington University in St. Louis, with more than $1.2 million for laryngeal-nerve work, took 32. Vanderbilt has taken more than $109 million over decades for obesity, diabetes, and liver studies. The University of Washington implants tumor cells in prostates. The University of Chicago induces severe strokes. The University of Cincinnati kills dogs to harvest larynxes.

Keep reading

DISTURBING: Woke Stanford University Caught Using AI to Race-Swap Male Student with Black Female in Ad — Student Left Feeling ‘Silenced and Erased’

Stanford University, an institution that receives hundreds of millions in taxpayer funding, was caught red-handed using Artificial Intelligence (AI) to digitally erase a student and replace him with an AI-generated Black woman in university promotional materials.

The conservative campus paper The Stanford Review reported Monday that Stanford Residential & Dining Enterprises took a photograph shot by a university photographer, ran it through AI, and published the doctored result as advertising.

Sophomore Billy Ramirez recognized the original shot. In the banner that went out, he was gone. In his place: an AI-generated Black woman. Two students to his right were also digitally slimmed down and had their faces altered.

“I was driving to school from my hometown when my friend sent me the images comparing the banner to the original photos, and I was immediately baffled,” Ramirez told The Stanford Review.

“At first, I found it hilarious that they had used AI to completely change our appearances, including my race and gender. But after looking at the comparison, I was also upset because I don’t agree with Stanford making those choices about how we were represented. Seeing my identity changed and being left out of the picture made me feel, in a way, silenced and erased from a representation that was supposed to include me.”

Keep reading

How We Destroyed Community College Education for Generations of Students – and Why We Need a Reset

I went to an opportune lunch to talk about the 2018 disappearance of Arizona Junior College (JUCO) football for financial and funding reasons. Three hours later, I found the real story was Never Just About Football! We were talking about second chances, education, jobs, the minority students that community colleges are trying to reach – and what it might take to bring them back.

Sitting around the table were three candidates for the Maricopa County Community College District Governing Board: John Crow, running At-Large; Ryan Caracciolo, running in District 4; and Susan Winder, running in District 3. They are seeking three separate seats, but they have chosen to campaign together.

On paper, their explanation is fairly simple. Crow brings the business side, as the CEO focused on budgets, efficiency and accountability. Caracciolo brings the professional marketing side, focused on attracting students and growing enrollment. Winder brings the professional education side, with more than three decades as a longtime educator and administrator focused on what happens in the classroom and what students need to succeed.

But that is the résumé version. The lunch told a much more Human Story. We talked – a lot – about bringing back junior-college football and WHY. We talked about its cost, who should pay for it, whether private money should be involved, whether it could increase enrollment, and what measurable results would justify restoring it.

Keep reading

Boston Globe Praised Harvard for Suppressing Free Speech to Save It

The Boston Globe (9/13/26) ran an article contrasting two Boston-area universities’ approaches to campus free speech. Penned by higher education reporter Mike Damiano, the piece reads like an installment of Highlights for Children‘s didactic “Goofus and Gallant” feature, with one school clearly doing it right while the other is letting down the cause of free speech.

Northeastern University plays the role of the loathsome Goofus, with critics remarking that the “school’s leaders have taken a hands-off approach to speech issues since cracking down on a pro-Palestinian protest encampment more than two years ago.”

Meanwhile Harvard, in Gallant fashion,

undertook a multi-year experiment in remaking campus speech norms with top-down reforms, resulting in what students and professors describe as a kind of thaw on a campus where tensions over politics, ideology and speech had thrust it into an acrimonious national debate.

That certainly makes it sound better than Northeastern’s “hands-off approach.” But you have to ask: What did Harvard’s leadership actually do for speech when they put their hands on it?

Well, for one thing, “they have nudged teaching fellows and professors to keep their personal politics out of the classroom.” Huh—telling faculty not to talk about their politics does not actually sound like promoting free speech.

Keep reading

Carnegie Mellon University Associate Professor Under Fire for Disturbing Anti-White Social Media Posts

Uju Anya, an associate professor of second language acquisition at Carnegie Mellon University, is under fire for social media posts attacking White people, and this isn’t the first time.

The Gateway Pundit reported that Anya took to social media to also suggest that the attempted assassination of President Trump was a ” staged ” shooting and the shooter was part of a “stupid show.”

Anya also attacked Charlie Kirk following his murder.

According to Newsweek:

One of the latest flashpoints involves Uju Anya, an associate professor at Carnegie Mellon University, who referred to Kirk as a “s***bag” and said she hoped he would “rot in p***” while participating in online “Kirkiversary” posts marking the anniversary of the conservative commentator’s death.

As criticism mounted, users also resurfaced a number of Anya’s older posts, including a 2021 exchange in which she allegedly told another user, “Die first, white man,” as well as earlier comments celebrating the death of conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh.

The recent controversy she has found herself in is a video in which she declares, “These f*cking racist white supremacist pedophile assh*les will not win.”

Keep reading

Medical student research is low quality but spreads nonetheless, study finds

Published research by medical students continues to proliferate despite concerns about the quality of the work, according to a new report.

“Why Johnny Can’t Stop Writing: The Boom in Low-Impact, Politicized Medical Student Research,” authored by Do No Harm’s Jay Greene, highlights the proliferation of low-quality medical student research in the past 20 years. The researcher offered potential solutions in original comments sent to The College Fix.

Greene found that in the early 2000s, fewer than 12 publications listed students as authors or co-authors, but in the 2020s, more than 700 publications could claim medical student authorship. 

Additionally, between 2000 and 2006 no more than 17 publications listed a student author per year, but by 2022, 932 publications listed authors as such. 

Much of this research is low-quality and focuses on identity politics.

Greene found between 2000 and 2013, six percent of medical student publications contained at least one of nine preselected “woke terms” in the title or abstract. These terms are: “equity,” “disparities,” “social,” “justice,” “race,” “racist,” “racism,” “diversity,” or “inclusion.”

However, between 2021-2025, the number had risen to 21 percent.

Examples include “Reforming Medical Curricula to support Indigenous Students and Reduce Healthcare Disparities,” “Addressing Health Inequities in the United States: A Case Report on Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and Social Determinants of Health,” and “Filling the Gap: Creating a Student-Run LGBT+ Clinging to Address Health Disparities.”

He offered a solution in an email to The Fix: “By returning to objective letter grading, schools would incentivize students to focus on mastering their skill set in the clinical space rather than fluffing their resumes with baseless research endeavors.”

Greene said patients benefit when only high-quality research is being used by medical professionals.

“If they take time from those productive activities to produce lousy research, they will be worse doctors and harm patient outcomes,” Greene told The Fix.

Also, “an increasing volume of lousy research dilutes the quality of medical research, mis-informing both medical students and already-practicing doctors,” the research expert said. “When doctors are increasingly mis-informed […] they will tend to be worse doctors,” Greene told The Fix.

Keep reading