Tag: universities

Colorado Medical School Will Pay $10.3 Million After Denying Religious Exemptions for COVID Vaccine

The University of Colorado Anschutz School of Medicine will pay more than $10.3 million to 18 faculty and students whose religious exemptions to the school’s mandatory COVID-19 vaccine policy were denied, a group representing the plaintiffs announced Monday.

The lawsuit challenged the university’s refusal to accommodate sincerely held religious objections to the COVID-19 vaccine. The plaintiffs, who sued anonymously, included physicians, medical students, nurses and administrative staff.

The Thomas More Society, which filed the lawsuit and represents clients in religious liberty cases nationwide, stated that the settlement is a rare instance in which plaintiffs recovered monetary damages under the First Amendment for a government COVID-19 vaccine mandate.

Michael McHale, senior counsel at the Thomas More Society, said the resolution cannot undo the harm inflicted on the plaintiffs.

“No amount of compensation or course-correction” can make up for the damage caused by the university’s vaccine mandate, McHale said. “At great, and sometimes career-ending, costs, our heroic clients fought for the First Amendment freedoms of all Americans who were put to the unconscionable choice of their livelihoods or their faith.”

Details of the settlement, which followed more than a year of negotiations, were not released. According to the Thomas More Society, the school agreed to cover damages, tuition and attorneys’ fees.

The settlement ends nearly five years of related litigation in state and federal courts.

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9 In 10 College Students Think ‘Words Can Be Violence’; Survey

Nine out of ten undergraduate students think that “words can be violence” at least “somewhat,” according to a new Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression survey. 

The poll also showed that ideological gaps between left-leaning and right-leaning students are widening.

When respondents were asked how much the statement “words can be violence” describes their thoughts, 47 percent answered with “completely” or “mostly.” Twenty-eight percent said it describes their thoughts “somewhat,” and 15 percent said “slightly.”

Additionally, around 59 percent of students said “silence is violence” describes their views at least “somewhat,” though only 28 percent said it describes their thoughts “completely” or “mostly.” 

“When people start thinking that words can be violence, violence becomes an acceptable response to words,” FIRE Chief Research Advisor Sean Stevens said in a news release following the poll. 

“Even after the murder of Charlie Kirk at a speaking event, college students think that someone’s words can be a threat. This is antithetical to a free and open society, where words are the best alternative to political violence,” Stevens said. 

The poll also showed that moderate and conservative students have grown less supportive of disruptive or violent tactics to stop campus speakers, while liberal students’ support for those tactics has stayed the same or risen slightly compared to the spring. 

At the same time, moderate and conservative students have become more open to allowing controversial speakers, while liberal students have maintained or increased their opposition to those speakers.

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University of Delaware Student Arrested with Guns and Manifesto Referencing ‘Martyrdom’

On November 24, 2025, Wilmington, Delaware, resident and University of Delaware student Luqmaan Khan, 25,  was stopped by police during an after-hours property check in Canby Park West. Khan is a legal immigrant from Pakistan.

Court documents reveal that Khan was asked, and subsequently refused, to exit the vehicle. He was taken into custody and, during a search of his vehicle, officers found a .357 caliber Glock handgun loaded with 27 rounds.

The United States District Attorney’s Office, District of Delaware shares, “The handgun had been inserted into a microplastic conversion firearm brace kit.  Within the vehicle, officers also found all the following: (i) three more loaded, 27-round magazines (one in the storage slot of the conversion kit); (ii) a loaded Glock 9mm magazine; (iii) an armored ballistic plate; and (iv) a marble composition notebook.”

“In the handwritten notebook, Khan discussed additional weapons and firearms, how they could be used in an attack, and how law enforcement detection could be avoided once an attack was carried out. The notebook referenced a member of the University of Delaware’s Police Department by name, and included a layout of a building with entry and exit points under which the words ‘UD Police Station’ were printed.”

According to The Daily News, in addition to mentioning  a UDPD officer by name, investigators shared that the notebook included writings about “martyrdom.”

The following day, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and NCCPD executed a search warrant at Khan’s Wilmington residence and discovered a Glock 19 9mm handgun equipped with an illegal machinegun conversion device.

A .556 rifle with a scope and a red dot sight, eleven more extended magazines, hollow point rounds of ammunition, and a two-plate tactical vest equipped with a single ballistic plate were also recovered.

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Politically Correct ‘Dignity Index’ Would Inject Social Credit Scores Into Public Education

The University of Utah recently opened the first official office for the Dignity Index, a program based on an eight-point scale that rates how statements sound during political or social disagreement. Project UNITE, the Index’s creator, is marketing the speech-classification framework to politicians, business leaders, and educators across the country, and several school districts and universities have already adopted the tool.

The Dignity Index was created by the nonprofit Project UNITE and piloted in Utah through a partnership with researchers at the University of Utah’s Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute, David Eccles School of Business, and Hinckley Institute of Politics. As detailed in the Utah Pilot Project Technical Summary, the demonstration phase relied on Eccles School and Gardner Policy Institute leadership and a team of 22 trained student coders who scored political statements each week on the Index’s eight-point scale. The Dignity Index categorizes speech from Level 1 — described as the most contemptuous — to Level 8, which reflects language focused on connection and cooperation (“we’re bound together”). According to the Dignity Project’s public materials, the model is intended to help students and adults recognize how their tone affects political dialogue.

In 2022, the project expanded nationally with the involvement of Tim Shriver, co-founder of CASEL — which stands for Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning — and the CEO of the nonprofit UNITE, which focuses on depolarization efforts. Shriver, who helped coordinate the rollout, has described the scale as part of a strategy to reduce “contempt” in American public life.

How the Index Works

The Index was initially used in public-policy settings and in analyzing statements made by political candidates during the 2022 Utah congressional races. Since then, its use has widened. The Irvine Unified School District in California recently piloted the model in a classroom setting, describing it as a tool for “strengthening understanding and connection” during discussions. Program materials encourage students to examine statements, identify where they fall on the scale, and reflect on ways to de-escalate disagreements.

Proponents of the Index argue that it helps teach civil discourse at a time when classrooms face rising tensions around political and social issues. In a local news outlet, Salt Lake City School District Superintendent Elizabeth Grant made the district’s intent clear: “We want to reduce contempt in our community, broadly and more specifically, in our district. Our emphasis is on dignity.” To that end, the district is now turning to the Dignity Index.

The project promotes what it calls three primary “effects”: the Electrifying Effect, where individuals request coaching or workshops; the Mirror Effect, where participants reflect on their own tone; and the Agency Effect, where users feel empowered to reduce contempt in their communities.

Because the Dignity Index focuses on tone, perception, and emotional communication, it has found an audience within the broader SEL (social-emotional learning) landscape. The school district in Salt Lake City has already used CASEL’s SEL competencies — self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills, and responsible decision-making — and is preparing to integrate the Index into its existing lessons on communication and conflict resolution.

Technology companies have also shown interest in frameworks that classify speech based on tone. Google’s Perspective API, for example, uses machine learning to rate online comments for “toxicity,” while Microsoft’s Responsible AI guidelines include similar tone-classification categories. The Dignity Index’s numeric structure is compatible with many of these systems, which are already used in some digital-citizenship programs.

While the Index is currently working with pilot programs, its expansion has also prompted questions from parents and education-policy commentators about how the tool might function in a school setting. Parent organizations that have previously opposed SEL programs have said they worry that classroom tools focused on tone may pressure children to adjust how they speak about controversial issues. Although concerns about indoctrination and viewpoint discrimination have been documented in reporting on SEL generally, my research finds no major published studies have yet evaluated parent response to the Dignity Index specifically.

Privacy and civil-liberties advocates such as the Future of Privacy Forum and several digital-rights groups have warned that tone-classification technology used in school settings must be closely monitored to prevent unintentional data collection or algorithmic bias. Ethics and free-speech commentators have echoed these worries. Jack Marshall, writing at Ethics Alarms, has expressed concern that tone-scoring frameworks could constrain students’ ability to speak openly on moral and political issues.

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Oklahoma U student files discrimination report after flunking gender essay for psych class with trans instructor

A graduate assistant was removed from her position amid investigations into a contested discrimination report filed by a disgruntled student who repeatedly referenced the Bible in an essay response to an article about gender stereotypes — for a course taught by a transgender instructor.

In her essay, which was supposed to cover “how people are perceived based on societal expectations of gender,” University of Oklahoma student Samantha Fulnecky presented a biblically fueled tirade against the notion that there are multiple genders.

The psychology course’s professor, graduate student Mel Curth, who uses “she/they” pronouns, failed Fulnecky on the grounds that she neglected to address the prompt and relied more on “personal ideology” than “empirical evidence,” according to a bombshell thread shared by the university’s Turning Point USA chapter.

In the essay, Fulnecky repeats ad nauseam that she doesn’t take issue with gender stereotypes because “that is how God made us.” However, she neglected to cite the article she was responding to, save for a vague reference to “teasing as a way to enforce gender norms.”

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Outrageous: Wichita State Admits To Hiding Taxpayer Funded ‘LGBT’ Services in Leaked Audio

In the latest outrageous use of taxpayer money, a university official was reportedly caught on a recording “admitting that the school is hiding its LGBTQ medical services,” according to a report from Campus Reform.

This continues the trend of colleges continuing their Woke agenda under false pretenses.

Heather Stafford, Wichita State University’s Director of Student Health Services, said that the school does not include its LGBTQ-related medical services on its website anymore “for obvious reasons” in leaked audio posted by Libs of TikTok.

Libs of TikTok is a patriot who has been exposing the so-called “Alphabet Soup Mafia” and the grooming agenda for America to see.

Director Stafford was very clear about their agenda.

“We still do them,” Stafford said. “We still have them available for our students. We do PrEP and PEP for HIV prevention. We do DoxyPEP for STI prevention, and we do gender-affirming hormones for students who are ages 19 years and older.”

Stafford even admitted this has been going on for several years.

As Campus Reform rightly pointed out, this hidden Woke agenda comes despite a Trump administration crackdown on DEI in so-called “higher education”.

As reported, this year, President Donald Trump issued the Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity Executive Order.

Under this Executive Order, schools risk losing federal funding if they engage in DEI, which many view as discrimination.

“The Kansas Board of Regents also issued guidance to state universities following the passage and governor’s signature of Senate Bill 125, instructing schools to eliminate any mandates, policies, programs, preferences and activities relating to diversity, equity and inclusion.”

All parties have declined to comment at this time.

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Guess What This IL College Will Do to Students Who Follow Federal Law

This seems like a straight-up violation of the First Amendment and obstruction of federal laws.

The College of DuPage in Illinois is warning students that they will be punished if they report illegal alien students to authorities.

Here’s the highlighted portions of the text:

Will COD Police help ICE officers to apprehend and remove individuals from campus?

No, Illinois law prohibits COD Police from assisting federal agents in immigration enforcement. COD Police do not ask about immigration status, nor will they make arrests based solely on immigration status

…

Can a student be disciplined for calling immigration authorities on another student?

Yes, calling immigration authorities on another student could violate the COD Student Code of Conduct if the action is done with the intent to harass, discriminate, or retaliate against the other student.

The Department of Education and ICE might want to look into the College of DuPage for interfering with federal law enforcement. Blocking the school from receiving federal financial aid and tax dollars would be a great punishment for this blatant abuse.

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An MIT Student Awed Top Economists With His AI Study—Then It All Fell Apart

Aidan Toner-Rodgers, 27, sprung to the upper tiers of economics as a graduate student late last year from virtually out of nowhere.

While still taking core classes at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he wrote a paper on artificial intelligence’s workplace impact so rapidly influential it was cited in Congress. He appeared in the pages of The Wall Street Journal in December as the very picture of a wunderkind, in faded jeans with tousled hair, in between two of his mentors, including Nobel laureate Daron Acemoglu. Toner-Rodgers’s work offered a surprising and even hopeful revelation about our high-tech future. He concluded that AI increased worker productivity and spurred innovation. Also, people didn’t like using it very much.

Within weeks, those mentors were asking an unthinkable question: Had Toner-Rodgers made it all up?

By the spring, Toner-Rodgers was no longer enrolled at MIT. The university disavowed his paper. Questions multiplied, but one seemed more elusive than the rest: How did a baby-faced novice from small-town California dupe some of academia’s brightest minds?

“There is no world where this makes any sense,” said David Autor, one of the MIT professors who had previously championed his student’s research. MIT, Autor and Acemoglu declined to comment on​ the specifics of the investigation into the research, citing privacy constraints.

Toner-Rodgers’s illusory success seems in part thanks to the dynamics he has now upset: an academic culture at MIT where high levels of trust, integrity and rigor are all—for better or worse—assumed. He focused on AI, a field where peer-reviewed research is still in its infancy and the hunger for data is insatiable.Expand article logo  Continue reading

What has stunned his former colleagues and mentors is the sheer breadth of his apparent deception. He didn’t just tweak a few variables. It appears he invented the entire study.

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Minnesota university teaches about ‘whiteness pandemic’ and it does not sit well with taxpayers

DEI appeared alive and well in the Twin Cities, where a new report cast a light on the “absurd ideas” a university perpetuated on “whiteness” at the taxpayer’s expense.

Among the many initiatives of President Donald Trump’s administration, tackling the woke ideologies that have permeated the federal government and society has been given priority treatment. Now it appeared the University of Minnesota would be facing some extra scrutiny from the Department of Justice after the pet project of the school’s Culture and Family Life Lab director was found to be promoting the idea of a “Whiteness Pandemic.”

Featured in a report from the watchdog group Defending Education, Dr. Gail Ferguson of the university’s Institute of Child Development had led current and former graduate fellows on a project that contends, “If you were born or raised in the United States, you have grown up in the Whiteness Pandemic, and you can play a role in halting and reversing this pandemic, especially if you are White because of the power and privilege you hold in this racialized society.”

“If you were socialized into the culture of Whiteness during childhood, it is not your fault, but as an adult it is now your responsibility to self-reflect, re-educate yourself, and act,” continued the project, still prominently featured on the university’s website. “If you are a White adult, antiracist action involves an ongoing process of self-reflection in order to develop a healthy positive White identity while engaging in courageous antiracist parenting/caregiving.”

An example from the report featured by Defending Education took aim at families as it read, “Naming the Whiteness Pandemic shifts our gaze from the victims and effects of racism onto the systems that perpetrate and perpetuate racism, starting with the family system. At birth, young children growing up in White families begin to be socialized into the culture of Whiteness, making the family system one of the most powerful systems involved in systemic racism.”

“This far-left programming at a major public university is another example of how ingrained DEI is in higher education and is not going away any time soon,” Defending Education research Director Rhyen Staley told Fox News Digital.

“It is not only concerning that these programs appear to still be up and running, but that absurd ideas like ‘whiteness’ also gain legitimacy through dubious activist-academic ‘scholarship.’ Universities must end this nonsense yesterday,” added Staley.

As to how Ferguson’s project had drawn its conclusions, the research was said to have surveyed close to 400 white mothers, nearly all of whom were from Minnesota, with an average income between $125,000 and $150,000. The vast majority had a college education, and 61% identified as “somewhat or very liberal” compared to 18% as “somewhat or very conservative.”

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At U.S. College, Muslim ‘Imam’ Urges Cutting Off Fingertips of the ‘Filthy Rich’

‘It sounds like Jews, free speech, separation of church and state and capitalism would be ‘gone’ in the paradise awaiting the United States as a shariah-based system.’

A self-described Muslim “imam” delivered a rage-filled rant over being seated next to a Jewish speaker at what was supposed to be a multifaith event, then demanded that Muslims in the audience walk out.

They did.

The stunning exhibition of hate was documented by constitutional expert Jonanthan Turley, who has testified to Congress on the nation’s founding document, and represented members in court on those issues.

“The City College of New York campus began the latest example of anti-Semitic and extremist speech this week after Abdullah Mady, a student and self-proclaimed Imam, refused to sit next to a Jewish speaker and called for the tips of the fingers of ‘the filthy rich’ to be cut off in accordance with Shariah,” which is Islamic social law, he explained.

“Mady sparked a walkout of Muslim attendees at an interfaith religious event after objecting to the fact that he was seated next to Ilya Bratman, an adjunct lecturer and executive director of Hillel at Baruch College, launching into an anti-Semitic diatribe,” Turley explained.

Mady’s exhibition included, “I came here to this event not knowing I would be sitting next to a Zionist and this is something I am not going to accept. My people are being killed right now in Gaza. If you’re a Muslim, out of strength and dignity, I ask you to exit this room immediately.”

About 100 students followed his Shariah-based orders.

Turley also pointed out that Mady was promoting Shariah, pushing for the “tips of the hands of a thief” be cut off to reduce crime.

And he defined those he wants mutilated.

“I’m talking about the elite, the filthy rich, the ones that continue to steal from people as we speak today. Those are the ones that deserve their tips to be cut off,” he claimed.

Turley had his own warning, “What is most notable about these hateful words is how figures like Mady are combining Islamic extremism with the extreme economic messaging in New York, where a socialist was just elected New York mayor.”

He also commented on Mady’s claims that under Shariah, pornography, alcohol, gambling, interest all is gone.

“Indeed, it sounds like Jews, free speech, separation of church and state and capitalism would be ‘gone’ in the paradise awaiting the United States as a shariah-based system,” he said.

The New York Post said the university now is investigating.

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