Tag: universities

Disgraced New England mayor drags heels repaying $240,000 taxpayer cash

A former Connecticut mayor has repeatedly blown past deadlines to repay the $240,000 in taxpayer money that she allegedly misused while in office. 

Erin Stewart, 39, suspended her gubernatorial campaign in May after an investigation exposed alleged misuse of a New Britain credit card to ‘benefit herself, members of her family and her political campaigns,’ the city said.

The city alleged that Stewart improperly boosted her income in the 12 years she ran city hall.

After missing the first two deadlines, New Britain said that Stewart owes a total of $241,558 in attorneys’ fees, taxpayer funds and tuition reimbursement.

‘I take the allegations that have been made against me very seriously,’ the former mayor said in a public statement. ‘And for that reason, I am suspending my gubernatorial campaign effective immediately so that I can focus on addressing those claims.’

Stewart and her charity, the Mayor’s Trophy Charity Fund, were investigated by the Crumbie Law Group who were hired by Mayor Bobby Sanchez, Stewart’s successor, the CT Mirror reported. 

The Republican allegedly used more than $30,000 of the city funds to pay for her master’s degree program in public administration at the University of New Haven, News 8 reported. 

Another $22,000 of city money was allegedly spent on deliveries to her home including clothes, makeup, an ice maker, diapers and baby formula, documents obtained by the outlet showed. 

The card also funded nearly $20,000 in membership fees as well as food and drink at a private social club, the Hartford Club, the Mirror reported. 

According to a letter addressed to Connecticut Attorney General William Tong on June 5, New Britain also accused Stewart of buying items with the city-issued card between 2016 and 2025 and selling them in a ‘moving-out tag sale.’

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Universities Could Lose Foreign-Student Certification Over Internship Rule Violations, Trump Admin Says

President Donald Trump’s administration has issued a memo to universities aimed at restricting certain internship work authorizations for international students. Officials cautioned that schools failing to comply could have their certification to enroll foreign students revoked.

The memo, which is dated Aug. 24 and issued by the Student and Exchange Visitor Program under U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), said the agency “has observed a rise in Curricular Practical Training (CPT) authorizations that appear to violate regulatory requirements which permit CPT only where the training is an integral part of an established curriculum.”

“Failure to comply with SEVP regulations may result in an institution losing certification to enroll foreign students,” the memo said.

Some schools have already stopped processing applications. The University of California, Los Angeles ceased issuing certain CPT authorizations while it reviewed the guidance.

“UCLA has paused certain Curricular Practical Training authorizations while it reviews recent federal guidance and determines next steps,” a UCLA spokesperson said.

At the University of California, Berkeley, the international office described the Aug. 24 memo as “more narrow in focus, more direct, and includes content that is more restrictive in nature.”

An earlier memo had been issued in mid-August. Berkeley said it is unlikely to process certain work authorization applications “in the near future” and told international students to plan accordingly.

The university will keep handling “degree-requirement” CPT as usual and plans to resume “Doctoral Dissertation and Master’s Thesis Research CPT.”

University officials said they would consult legal experts to align processes with the new federal requirements.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS), ICE’s parent agency, said the underlying regulations have not changed.

“However, schools and employers should consider themselves on notice: under President Trump, abuse of this generous system will no longer be tolerated.”

CPT allows eligible international students to participate in internships or training when the work forms an integral part of their academic curriculum. The memo stresses that the training must connect to an established academic program.

This step fits into an overarching set of changes for foreign students. In July, DHS completed a rule ending the long-standing “duration of status” policy. That system had permitted many F, J, and I visa holders to remain in the country without a fixed departure date.

The new rule, published in the Federal Register on July 17 and effective Sept. 15, limits most stays to four years unless students apply for extensions through the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Extensions will require screening, background checks, and fraud reviews. The grace period after the conclusion of studies is reduced from 60 days to 30 days.

“For nearly half a century, the outdated ‘duration of status’ system has compromised national security and created an environment ripe for immigration fraud,” DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin said at the time.

“By implementing clear, finite limits on these visas, the United States is reclaiming its ability to properly screen, vet, and monitor individuals within our borders.”

The rule is being challenged in court by a coalition of unions and advocacy groups that say the new rule makes the United States less competitive as a destination for international talent.

Earlier this year, ICE published the findings of an investigation into Optional Practical Training, a separate post-graduation work program.

Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons said investigators “have identified over 10,000 foreign students who claim to be working for highly suspect employers.”

Visits turned up empty buildings, locked doors, and addresses associated with hundreds of students who were not involved in the activity they claimed, he said. Officials also found “phantom employees” who never reported to the listed sites, as well as complex international financial transactions, according to Lyons.

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Colorado college drops charges against student journalists, but speech restrictions remain uncertain

The Community College of Aurora closed its conduct case against student journalists this month, finding them “not responsible” due to unclear rules, after restricting the reporters from interviewing and publishing without prior approval and charging them for continuing those activities.

The student newspaper, FoxTalk, is led by CCA student Andrew Green, who told The College Fix via email that the decision, “is a big step forward.” 

He added that he still doesn’t “know whether the restrictions on interviews, reporting and publishing have actually been lifted.”

“I want the earlier warning reconsidered, and a clear answer about whether we are free to interview students, report and publish. I would much rather spend my time building the newsroom than fighting the college,” he said.

He added that he believes the school and newspaper can have a “good relationship” moving forward, “while FoxTalk still does independent journalism.” 

Green also said he is “working with the Student Press Law Center’s New Voices team to explore legislation around protections for college student journalists in Colorado,” he said. 

“Even if FoxTalk and CCA resolve everything, I would like the next student journalist to have clearer rules than I did,” Green told The Fix. 

A free speech group called the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression continues to press the college. 

Program Manager for FIRE’s Student Press Freedom Initiative Marie McMullan said the group is “assessing next steps” and that “until the ban on publication and student disciplinary measures are rescinded, our concerns remain.”

She also said that this “kind of blanket ban on student journalism can’t remain in place, and we continue pushing CCA to change its course.” 

FIRE had sent a demand letter this month to CCA Vice President Reyna Anaya, calling on the school to “drop the charges against any student who chooses not to comply with such unconstitutional demands, and forego further censorial practices.” 

The group alleges that CCA’s directives violated the First Amendment through prior restraint, prior review, compelled speech, and restrictions on associational freedom.

Reached for comment, CCA Executive Director of Communications and Special Initiatives Courtney Butler told The College Fix that the school is still reviewing the matter and is unable to provide additional comment.

FoxTalk was registered under the college on March 13th. In April, Green asked CCA administrators “to confirm whether FoxTalk could seek comment from CCA faculty and staff in their personal capacities without going through Butler’s office,” according to FIRE’s demand letter. 

Dean of Student Success Julie LaRock then informed Green that the newspaper would need to “receive staff approval before identifying themselves as FoxTalk staff, accessing non-public spaces, beginning work on each month’s stories, and publishing any content whatsoever.”

LaRock further advised Green to hold off on additional work until structural coordination with the administration and faculty was established.

On June 3, Green questioned the order to stop FoxTalk from publishing, saying the group still planned to cover the June 30 primary election, including a debate at the University of Denver. 

After an administrator said FoxTalk only had to follow regular student-organization rules, Green assumed they could publish again and wrote to confirm. The administrator replied that the ban was still in place until FoxTalk’s structure was fixed, and also criticized the activities of three members.

On July 14, Green was charged with interviewing students, posting on the FoxTalk website, contacting employees, and ignoring earlier orders. On July 23 he was charged again for not following a college official’s directives. 

McMullan told The Fix that CCA’s rationale for restricting the students is not very common compared to what the group has seen in the past. However, several other schools have similarly tried to restrict student journalists. 

“Repeatedly … universities and colleges subjecting student journalists to investigations, hearings, and punishments for basic newsgathering and publishing, or attempting to wholesale stop students from publishing,” she said.

Morgan State University, for example, implemented a policy that restricts student journalists’ ability to gather news directly, requiring media inquiries to go through the Office of Public Relations and Strategic Communications, The College Fix previously reported. 

McMullan previously told The Fix this policy is a “blatantly” illegal “gag order.”

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MIT student claims he synthesized one of the deadliest chemicals known to man — sparking massive hazmat response

A student at MIT claimed he synthesized one of the world’s deadliest chemicals last week — sparking a massive hazmat response and the closure of the lab where he worked.

The unidentified grad student arrived at a local emergency room, saying he had synthesized dimethyl mercury, a highly toxic compound that can be fatal if exposed to humans in even the smallest amounts, NBC Boston reported.

The student was not authorized to be working with the compound and it was not part of his research, according to school officials.

MIT closed off Building 18 where the experiment took place on Wednesday and called in city emergency responders to begin the cleanup.

Common areas in the student’s residence hall were also professionally cleaned as a precaution, and the student’s room was sealed off.

Building 18 remained closed through Sunday as testing and investigations continued.

“Emerging information calls into question whether this compound was in fact synthesized,” an MIT spokesperson said on Saturday.

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Mellon Foundation Wages Philanthropic Jihad

Why is the Mellon Foundation funding programs linked to a political and religious system that seeks to destroy Western civilization? A cultural and ideological contest is underway for the future of Western civilization. The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation—long a champion of the humanities and an advocate for “social justice”—has directed substantial resources toward Islamic studies programs in higher education. These programs advance perspectives incompatible with core Western principles of free speech, religious liberty, equal rights for all citizens, and the rule of law.

Commentators such as Vince Coyner (American Thinker), Joel Richardson (Will Islam Be Our Future?), Imtiaz Mahmood, Craig Huey, and Daniel Greenfield have described Islam, in its classical and political forms, as expansionist, intolerant of apostasy and criticism, and hierarchical in its treatment of non-Muslims and women. Greenfield has highlighted large-scale violence attributed to Islamist actors that is sometimes reframed internationally as “decolonization” or resistance. Whether one accepts these characterizations or not, the question remains: why has Mellon, with its $7.7 billion endowment and stated commitment to elevating underrepresented perspectives, invested heavily in programs that normalize or advance such worldviews under the banner of the humanities?

Mellon Grants Supporting Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies

Mellon has funded numerous initiatives framed as advancing the study of Islam and Muslim communities in higher education. Selected examples include:
• Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies: Grants in 2000, 2010, and 2012 totaling approximately $870,000 for a digital multi-volume atlas of the social and intellectual history of the Islamic world.

• American University of Paris: $100,000 in 2007 for Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies.

• Earlham College: $300,000 in 2008 to develop an Islamic Studies Program.

• Swarthmore, Bryn Mawr, and Haverford Colleges: $670,000 in 2005 for a Tri-College Islamic/Middle Eastern Studies Initiative.

• Lehigh University: $1.4 million in 2009 to establish an undergraduate program and Center for Global Islamic Studies, intended to “heighten awareness surrounding Islamic culture and civilization.”

• The University of Chicago: $600,000 in 2010 and an additional $800,000 in 2013 for an Islamic Studies Initiative aimed at raising the field’s profile as an interdisciplinary enterprise. F

• Duke University: $750,000 in 2012 supporting international and area studies centers, including Islamic Studies.

• Connecticut College: $100,000 planning grant (circa 2012) followed by an $806,000 renewal in 2018 for its Global Islamic Studies program. Faculty directors Sufia Uddin and Eileen Kane have spoken of “undoing” narratives that portray Muslims as violent or as security threats, partnering with fields focused on other “persecuted” groups.

• University of Michigan / Big Ten: $3 million in 2014 for the Islamic Studies Virtual Curriculum (later Digital Islamic Studies Curriculum), expanding shared courses across Big Ten institutions.

• University of Maryland: Approximately $1.75 million (2022–2025) for the Open Islamicate Texts Initiative, developing digital access to premodern manuscripts in Arabic, Persian, Ottoman Turkish, and Urdu.

• UCLA: $350,000 in 2019 for a pilot project reframing Middle Eastern studies.

• Syracuse University: $500,000 in 2022 for a project on “Black-Arab Relationalities.”


These grants are real and publicly documented. Mellon is thereby sponsoring a radical and violent political system.” Many of the funded programs are academic in form, and, in practice, support a significant number of faculty and campus environments that tilt heavily toward narratives that downplay or justify Islamist violence.

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US Universities Had Extensive Ties With Chinese Defense Research Labs, Air Force Study Finds

Thirty U.S. academic institutions have until Aug. 31 to examine specified foreign research ties or risk losing eligibility for future federal research funding.

Seven days after the Pentagon ordered the reviews, an Air Force-affiliated institute published a study cataloging 204 interactions involving U.S. institutions and laboratories at the center of China’s defense research system.

The Aug. 24 study by the China Aerospace Studies Institute (CASI) found more U.S. institution-level interactions with China’s Defense Science and Technology Key Laboratories than those involving institutions from any other country.

CASI describes the Defense Science and Technology Key Laboratories as China’s highest level national laboratory network for military research. The contacts it identified ranged from academic visits and conferences to coauthored technical research and formal joint laboratories in fields including aero-engines, underwater sensing, hyperspectral target detection, advanced communications, and aerospace materials.

CASI described interactions between Western researchers and Chinese military laboratories as “at the very least problematic,” saying even seemingly benign exchanges could give Chinese defense researchers access to knowledge and technology useful to the People’s Liberation Army.

CASI Director Brendan Mulvaney told The Epoch Times that institutional collaborations-including joint laboratories, long-term partnerships, and mutual study or training agreements-were the most concerning because they represented sustained cooperation rather than one-off encounters.

The Pentagon’s Aug. 17 order directs 30 U.S. institutions to review academic, financial, and research relationships with foreign entities of concern and report what action they have taken by Aug. 31.

The Pentagon did not publicly identify the schools. According to a list DefenseScoop obtained from a U.S. official, Harvard University, MIT, the University of California-Berkeley, Duke University, Penn State, the University of Texas at Austin, New York University, and the University of Southern California are among institutions on that list that also appear in CASI’s records.

The Pentagon has not said that the relationships identified by CASI prompted the Aug. 17 notices.

Purdue and Beihang Built Joint Research Labs

In 2011, Purdue and Beihang formally established the BUAA-Purdue Joint Laboratory on Energy Systems and the BUAA-Purdue Joint Laboratory on Low Emissions Combustion.

Then-Purdue President France Córdova and Beihang President Huai Jinpeng signed the agreements.

The energy laboratory paired Purdue’s computational modeling with Beihang’s experimental capabilities. The combustion laboratory focused on low emission gas turbine combustors used in aircraft and power generation.

Beihang records also describe the two laboratories as formal joint research arrangements and say the universities discussed broader scientific research, teaching, and faculty and student exchanges.

Beihang later described the combustion laboratory within a research program that also undertook Chinese National Defense 973 projects, a state-backed basic research program supporting its defense science and technology.

CASI identified Beihang’s thermal engineering department-which oversees a Defense Science and Technology Key Laboratory for aero-engine aerodynamics and thermodynamics-as having established a joint combustion research team with Purdue.

Beihang is now on the Pentagon’s Section 1286 list of foreign institutions subject to tighter research security restrictions.

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UC Berkeley Math Professor Makes a Startling Revelation About Her Students as She Blasts School’s Woke Admissions Policy, Which an Obama Admin. Official Implemented

One of the nation’s supposedly most rigorous colleges is completely infested with unqualified students, forcing a calculus teacher to come forward with a stunning revelation.

Zvezdelina Stankova, a professor of mathematics at UC Berkeley, wrote a damning op-ed in the San Francisco Standard last week excoriating the university’s woke admissions standards, which Then-President Janet Napolitano implemented.

Back in 2020, Napolitano, who served as Homeland Security Secretary under former President Barack Obama, overruled a task force that urged the school to phase out the SAT and ACT.

She argued that doing so was proper due to pandemic disruptions and ‘equity’ concerns.

The Regents voted later that year to make testing optional. Then, a court ruling focused on access for students with disabilities required UC to become test-blind through 2025.

Due to this policy, Stankova noted that because the kids are so far behind on mathematics, she has to spend her time teaching middle-school math to them.

Not high school. Middle school.

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They’re Getting Revenge, Starting Today…

I absolutely insist to you: I really am trying to stop writing about this topic. But too much insanity keeps breaking out, and I have no choice but to comment on it.

You know the story: a Cambridge academic, Jason Arday, was found to have plagiarized his dissertation, borrowed heavily from others in his published articles, produced essentially worthless research, called the police on a reporter and on a professor who asked questions about his resume, invented wild tales of athletic and academic achievement as well as philanthropic work, and (of course) accused his critics of “racism.” And then, late last week, he was found dead at his home in an apparent suicide.

That would have been it, but the left – instead of the embarrassment it should feel at having promoted the greatest academic charlatan of the past ten years (and that’s saying something) – is trying to play the victim here: mean right-wingers in the media shouldn’t have pushed so hard on the Arday story.

This is coming from people who call their enemies Nazis 24 hours a day without thinking there might be a problem with that.

Anyway, here’s the latest: the university that employs Nathan Cofnas, the academic who first broke the story about Jason Arday’s plagiarism and worthless “research,” is now being investigated by his own university for breaking the story.

Just when you think academia can’t be a bigger joke, it always finds some way to outdo itself.

Ghent University rector Petra de Sutter, former leader of the Green Party, issued a statement to the effect that while Ghent attaches “great importance to academic freedom and to open academic debate, even when views are controversial,” it wants the world to know that of course it doesn’t really mean that:

“That freedom is not unlimited. It goes hand in hand with responsibility and may be restricted in order to protect the rights of others.

“For this reason, the university takes the recent public statements made by a postdoctoral researcher at Ghent University regarding this matter very seriously. Ghent University has decided to take appropriate action within its powers and the applicable framework.”

Well, we just found out what that means.

They just suspended Nathan Cofnas, and he will almost surely be fired.

Cofnas wrote the original report on Jason Arday that forced academia to take notice. What he found was too embarrassing not to elicit a response. And his point is: Arday is not an isolated case. For that he cannot be forgiven.

As Cofnas put it on August 11:

In 2023, the Guardian itself (!) published a breathless article titled “Jason Arday: he learned to talk at 11 and read at 18 – then became Cambridge’s youngest Black professor.”

More than a dozen academic journals gave the imprimatur of “peer review” to Arday’s plagiarized wokebabble.

The prestigious New York publisher Simon & Schuster is still going ahead with his memoirs.

Now the Guardian wants us to think this is just about “one academic and his bosses at Cambridge”?

There are thousands of Jason Ardays in universities all over the Western world. The only thing special about Arday is that he took the plagiarism and lies about his personal life too far, so there was a hook for a news story. But even that wasn’t enough to get him removed from academia. Until last Wednesday Cambridge was still smearing his critics as waging a “vile campaign.” He crossed the line not by being an incompetent fraud, but by claiming prestigious affiliations that he didn’t have, creating conflict between Cambridge and other universities.

“DEI” means achieving representation by doing away with elementary standards for certain people based on race. Just take a look at the content of “peer-reviewed” journals like Whiteness in Education and Educational Philosophy and Theory. The other papers in these journals are just like those written by Arday—someone who is now widely recognized to be mentally disabled.

The people trying to write this off as a fluke or an isolated case of “research misconduct” are at best delusional. The ideology of elite institutions is DEI, and DEI is Jason Arday.

This was the most embarrassing academic episode of my lifetime. Everyone just witnessed a clear-cut case of academic fraud, a man who literally called the police on people who questioned his resume, and the overwhelming response from academia was to scream “racism” and sign a petition in his defense.

After they did that, the really embarrassing stuff came out, and they persisted.

So the mask is off, in case there’s still anyone out there who didn’t know what was behind it. The whole edifice of academia nowadays is held together with Scotch tape and piano wire, and slogans.

The institutions will survive as shells of their former selves, but what was once inside will disappear. Adrian Vermeule, the one sane person at Harvard Law School, just wrote: “The elite universities are of course going to survive. They’ve been around forever and will continue on in some form. What will not survive, however, is a certain idea of the scholarly mission and life. It died of its own weakness, an inability to resist invading barbarians.”

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Insanity: Amherst Professor’s Book Argues Asian American Success Is Tied To “White Supremacy”

In the latest example of leftist race-baiting professor bias Campus Reform is reporting “An Amherst College professor’s forthcoming book will argue that the same conditions that allow Asian Americans to prosper also lead to “xenophobic attacks” against them.”

The absurd book is titled “Success Won’t Save Us: How Asian Americans Can Fight White Supremacy”.

Among the radical and race-baiting claims this professor makes is “in the United States: they are both celebrated for their achievements and subjected to racialized violence.”

Another race-baiting and unfair claim this Amherst professor makes is “Asian American experience must be understood within a system of white supremacy and racial capitalism.”

This whole divisive and Marxist rhetoric dividing Americans by race and blaming “White Supremacy” for all woes is typical of the average liberal professor.

“Pawan Dhingra, the book’s author, is a professor of U.S. Immigration Studies, the chair of the Asian American and Pacific Islander Studies department, and the Vice President for Equity and Inclusion at Amherst College in Massachusetts. His research interests include “Asian America,” “race/gender/class intersectionality,” “white supremacy,” “sociology of immigration,” “education,” “work,” and “culture.”

The typical leftist professor continues to view America and the world through these lenses and, as such, is guilty of anti-White racism themselves.

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Oregon State Mentors Face Social Justice Criteria After Ending Official DEI Program

Woke has not yet been destroyed in Oregon, where, according to a Campus Reform report, “Oregon State University requires applicants for its 2026–27 Academic Learning Assistant positions to demonstrate an ability to learn “social justice principles and concepts,” even after the university ended two diversity programs.”

In other words, its DEI is just not called by name.

Oregon State wants its Mentors trained in political correctness and Social Justice, even if not called DEI.

“Another residence-life position now makes a commitment to diversity or social-justice education, initiatives, and programs a minimum qualification rather than a preferred one.”

These requirements are absurd and unfair, but that’s come to be expected at this point at left-leaning universities.

“The university’s Academic Learning Assistant page says the live-in mentors serve one per residential community and work an average of 15 hours per week. Applicants must hold at least a 3.0 GPA. Oregon State also prefers applicants who demonstrate engagement with diversity and social-justice education, initiatives, or programs.”

“Academic Learning Assistants meet individually with residents, hold weekly office hours, conduct hall rounds, and lead two or three academic-success workshops per term. They also contact students experiencing academic difficulty, make referrals, and staff residence-hall front desks.”

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