Tag: universities

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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‘What happens on campus doesn’t stay on campus,’ professor says at free speech event

“What happens on campus doesn’t stay on campus. For better or for worse,” Princeton University Professor Robert George said during a recent talk about how free speech ideas in higher education have filtered into the broader culture. 

George, a well-known conservative, spoke Friday at the event “Faithful Free Speech: From Campus to the Hill,” hosted by the American Enterprise Institute and Faith and Law, a non-partisan organization that serves congressional staff, integrating faith and policy. AEI is a think tank based in Washington, D.C. that defends human dignity and prioritizes the values of the nation’s founding. 

Pete Peterson, dean of Pepperdine University’s School of Public Policy, spoke with George about the founders’ intention behind the First Amendment in connecting religion and speech.

George, the McCormick professor of jurisprudence at Princeton, quoted the Declaration of Independence, which says human beings’ rights are “endowed” by God. 

“In other words, the role of government is to secure rights that government did not create,” George said. “Those rights don’t come from the hands of kings or presidents or parliaments or Congresses or Supreme Courts. They come from no merely human power.”

The government’s job is to secure these rights by making sure “people do not become predators against each other, that people don’t violate each other’s rights,” he said. 

Recalling a quote from James Madison, George said, “Only a well-instructed people can be permanently free people. And the way we gain instruction is not simply by going to school. That’s important. It’s very important. But that’s not the only way.”

George continued, “We gain instruction by engaging with each other, by trading reasons and arguments, by doing business with each other in the proper currency of intellectual discourse.”

He urged Americans to pay attention to what is happening on college campuses because “what happens on campus really is vital to what happens in the broader society.”

He gave the example of how “hate speech” is now widely considered to be an exception to the First Amendment, an idea that began on college campuses. 

George said his students at Princeton are high achievers, valedictorians and top-level SAT scorers. But when he teaches Constitutional law and asks what types of speech are not protected by the First Amendment, they often mention “hate speech.”

“There is no such category which in our Constitutional jurisprudence constitutes an exception, and for very good reasons,” he said. 

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Why a Student With a 1590 SAT Score Was Rejected by 16 Colleges

Stanley Zhong did everything right. A 4.42 weighted GPA (3.98 unweighted). A 1590 SAT score (1600 is perfect). He’d even launched his own startup (RabbitSign).

Yet the 18-year-old Palo Alto-area graduate was stunned when he found himself rejected by 16 of the 18 schools he’d applied to, including multiple state schools.

“Some of the state schools, I really thought, you know, I had a good chance,” Zhong told ABC7 News. “I didn’t get in.”

Zhong’s story has begun to gather some media attention, which was the subject of discussion at a recent House Committee on Education and the Workforce hearing. Yet almost all of the stories failed to mention the likely reason Zhong was rejected: He’s Asian.

For years, colleges have been quietly discriminating against Asians in the admission process, admitting white, black, and Latino students with lower SAT scores and lower GPAs in the name of inclusivity. The problem for Asians is that, as a group, they tend to score really well.

This means there’s an abundance of highly qualified Asians applying to universities each year. This would not be a problem for Asian students if not for race-conscious universities, which, in recent years, have demonstrated a preference for social equity and racial balance over merit.

As a result, untold numbers of Asians have found themselves excluded from universities simply because of their race.

Harvard, which was sued in 2013 by Students for Fair Admissions for racial discrimination, is a high-profile example. Several years ago, the university released data showing that over an 18-year period (1995–2013), Asian American students outscored every other racial peer group, averaging an SAT section score of 767 (max 800). That is substantially higher than white people (745), Hispanic people (718), Native Americans (712), and black people (704).

In other words, Asian Americans had to outperform other racial peer groups to be admitted.

“[Asian Americans were] being held to a higher standard than [others], all else equal,” Duke economist Peter S. Arcidiacono wrote in a pretrial report.

The dirty secret was that Harvard, like most universities, was using racial discrimination to admit certain racial groups at the expense of others.

Many colleges and defenders of affirmative action, i.e., “positive discrimination,” refused to admit this was actually racial discrimination. Some supporters of the policy, however, had the intellectual honesty to do so.

“I can accept the trade-offs as the necessary cost of this policy,” Jonathan Chait wrote in a 2022 New York magazine article. “What I can’t accept is the refusal by Harvard and its defenders to admit what the policy is.”

Chait described their refusal as “gaslighting,” and the Supreme Court agreed. In a watershed 2023 decision, the court held that race-based admissions violated the Constitution’s equal protection clause.

The high court was right, but we should look beyond the legal problems of affirmative action.

America is built on the idea that all people should be treated equally, but today, we’re divided on the question of whether racial discrimination should be used so long as it results in preferred outcomes. The vast majority of people (73%) oppose race-based admissions, but it’s a policy supported by many liberals—indeed, demanded.

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‘Everybody Knew This Current Federal Administration Was Not Liking Black folk, Was Not Liking Latino Folk, and Was Not Down with Immigrants,’ says University President

The lingering effects of racism and white supremacy have tainted American thinking, or so claims one university president in The Golden State.

The Gateway Pundit spoke to Dr. Rick Addante, a neuroscientist and former tenured psychology professor with 25 years of experience in academia. In September 2025, the former professor was invited to an event hosted by the American Psychological Association (APA) Leadership Development Institute, featuring the president of California State University, Dominguez Hills (CSUDH). Dr. Addante said attendees were notified that the event was being recorded and that they were permitted to share its contents.

On October 1, the former professor posted video clips on X of CSUDH president Dr. Thomas Parham addressing the virtual crowd.

According to Dr. Addante, “it is important for this big lede not to be buried.” That is, he argued, “the president of CSU says he sees it as his role to disrupt and dislodge white people, their beliefs, and more. That’s a big deal, and it’s appalling.”

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MIT Says It Will Not Sign Trump Admin’s Higher Education Compact

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has declined to sign onto the Trump administration’s proposed compact, which would mandate campus reforms in exchange for preferential access to federal funding.

MIT President Sally Kornbluth announced the decision on Oct. 10 in a campus-wide letter attaching her formal response to Education Secretary Linda McMahon, who invited nine universities to sign the new agreement.

The proposed “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education” would require participating universities to freeze tuition for five years, limit international student enrollment, and adopt the federal government’s biology-based definitions of sex and gender when it comes to sports or single-sex spaces.

Other provisions call for reinstating the SAT requirement for applicants, curbing grade inflation, prohibiting the use of race and sex as factors in admissions or employment, and reforming or dismantling departments that “purposefully punish, belittle, and even spark violence against conservative ideas.”

MIT ‘Cannot Support the Proposed Approach’

In her response, Kornbluth acknowledged that MIT shares some of the administration’s stated goals, such as focusing on merit, reducing costs for students, and upholding free expression.

“These values and other MIT practices meet or exceed many standards outlined in the document you sent. We freely choose these values because they’re right, and we live by them because they support our mission—work of immense value to the prosperity, competitiveness, health, and security of the United States. And of course, MIT abides by the law,” Kornbluth wrote.

She also noted that MIT disagreed with a number of the demands, saying that they “would restrict freedom of expression and our independence as an institution” and that the premise of the document is inconsistent with MIT’s core belief that “scientific funding should be based on scientific merit alone.”

“In our view, America’s leadership in science and innovation depends on independent thinking and open competition for excellence,” Kornbluth wrote.

“In that free marketplace of ideas, the people of MIT gladly compete with the very best, without preferences. Therefore, with respect, we cannot support the proposed approach to addressing the issues facing higher education.”

MIT is the first of the nine universities invited to join the compact to publicly reject it. The administration also invited Brown University, Dartmouth College, the University of Arizona, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Southern California, the University of Texas at Austin, the University of Virginia, and Vanderbilt University.

It’s unclear why those particular institutions were chosen or whether other schools will be offered the same terms.

The Department of Education did not respond to requests for comment from The Epoch Times by publication time.

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Unhinged Oklahoma State University Professor Placed on Leave After Threatening and Reprimanding Student Who Spoke at Event Honoring Charlie Kirk

An Oklahoma State University student says he was reprimanded and threatened by a university staffer simply for wearing a Turning Point USA “47” hat while speaking in honor of Charlie Kirk.

Joshua Wilson, a junior and Senate University Chairman at OSU, says the confrontation came out of nowhere during a routine one-on-one meeting with a student government coordinator, News9 reported.

What started as a heartfelt tribute to Kirk, who was assassinated by a radical leftist, quickly devolved into a chilling lecture on “triggered” family members and veiled warnings about his future at the university.

Wilson said the hat, a white ball cap emblazoned with a gold “47” (for Donald Trump as the 47th President) and the Turning Point USA logo, wasn’t intended as a political statement.

He and a friend decided to speak briefly at a student government meeting to honor Charlie Kirk, who had visited the campus earlier this year as part of his Turning Point USA Campus Tour.

“Me and my friends were so distraught, but the first kind of thought that came to our mind was, ‘What do other students kind of think right now?” Wilson told News9. “If we’re this pained by it, if we’re worried about what may happen to us also, what are other students worried about?”

Donning their TPUSA hats, they stepped up to remind their peers that open dialogue, not censorship, is the bedrock of America.

“We thought, OK, we have our turning point hats, let’s go to student government and show our constituents they don’t have to be afraid to have a conversation and to speak about what they believe in, and that’s what we did,” Wilson said.

“It wasn’t something that was partisan. It wasn’t something that we were supporting Trump, you know, but it was a hat that symbolized that conversation is what built this country, what should maintain it.”

During the meeting, Wilson said his message was met with applause and support. No one, including the staff member who would later reprimand him, voiced any objections at the time.

“For me personally, it has nothing to do with partisan politics whatsoever, it’s just something I got at an event that meant a lot to me,” Wilson said.

“In that meeting, I hope that with the student government where I was giving my speech, I hope it was expressed that was not the issue, not partisan politics, but just the issue or the crux of the idea of why I brought the hat to campus was that students shouldn’t feel afraid, and we can go forward.”

A week later, Wilson said he was summoned to a private meeting by the staffer who had been present at his speech. He described feeling threatened and cornered.

During the meeting, which Wilson recorded and obtained by News9, the staffer admitted she was offended by his attire, saying:

“I have family who don’t look like you who are triggered by those hats and by that side.”

Wilson said he calmly explained that his hat was not about partisan politics, but about honoring free speech and the First Amendment. The staffer allegedly replied that if he “questioned that belief,” his year “might not be easy.”

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University adds ‘trigger warning’ to James Bond novel ‘Dr. No’

An entertainment staple for over 50 years, the suave British spy James Bond has been featured in numerous novels and 26 films, the most recent being “No Time to Die,” actor Daniel Craig’s last as Agent 007.

News broke this past week that the film franchise’s new owner, Amazon Studios, digitally removed 007’s handgun from various Bond actors’ poses. But after fan outrage, Amazon put the guns back … and offered no explanation, according to OutKick.

The Pierce Brosnan pose for “Goldeneye” looked particularly stupid.

Now the University of Portsmouth in the U.K. has included the Bond novel “Dr. No” on a list of 50 books that have trigger warnings, according to The Telegraph.

“Please note: James Bond films and novels are popular to this day but contain many problematic issues such as racism, misogyny and xenophobia,” the university said. “We will be discussing the problems with this text in all of our seminars.”

The school said it “encourages students ‘to engage with teaching texts in an informed way’ through content notes.”

Content warnings recognise the diverse lived experience of students and that there can be content they will find challenging or potentially distressing as a result of their experiences. It is our duty of care to our students to do so. The warning enables students to prepare emotionally, engage more deeply and discuss the issues raised by the content critically and constructively.

Ian Kinane, a lecturer at the University of Roehampton and editor of the International Journal of James Bond Studies, defended the trigger warning.

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