Tag: campus

President Trump on Thursday signed an executive order to promote free speech on college campuses by threatening colleges with the loss of federal research funding if they do not protect those rights. "We’re here to take historic action to defend American students and American values," Trump said, surrounded by conservative student activists at the signing ceremony. A senior administration official said the order directs 12 grant-making agencies to use their authority in coordination with the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to ensure institutions that receive federal research or education grants promote free speech and free inquiry. White House officials have said it will apply to more than $35 billion in grants. "Even as universities have received billions and billions of dollars from taxpayers, many have become increasingly hostile to free speech and the First Amendment," Trump said. Trump had announced that such an order was forthcoming at the Conservative Political Action Conference last month, where he said the directive would require colleges and universities to support free speech in exchange for federal research dollars. He brought on stage Hayden Williams, a conservative activist who was attacked while working a recruitment table on campus at the University of California-Berkeley. The video quickly went viral, with conservatives citing it as further evidence of the stifling and sometimes-violent atmosphere that conservatives face on campus. He’s going to be a wealthy young man.” “If they want our dollars, and we give it to them by the billions, they’ve got to allow people like Hayden and many other great young people and old people to speak,” Trump said. “Free speech.

Pete Marovich for The New York Times OXON HILL, Md. The president made the announcement during a rambling two-hour speech to activists at the Conservative Political Action Conference outside Washington, but he did not provide any details about the possible executive order. The issue of free speech on college campuses has for years been a cause célèbre among young conservative activists, who point to instances around the country in which conservative voices have been shunned by liberal students and professors. “If they want our dollars, and we give it to them by the billions, they’ve got to allow people like Hayden and many great young people, and old people, to speak,” Mr. Trump said, drawing huge applause. Mr. Williams thanked the president for supporting young conservatives such as himself. The president has raised a similar threat before, implying he would withhold federal funds from Berkeley after it canceled a speech by Milo Yiannopoulos, a conservative speaker and professional provocateur. He said the executive order would “require colleges to support free speech if they want federal research” funding. It is not clear how long the idea has been under consideration at the White House or whether the president decided to pursue an executive order because of the episode involving Mr. Williams, which Fox News and other conservative outlets covered extensively. It is also unclear how much the president can withhold federal aid to colleges without congressional action. The president accused “open border” Democrats of letting murderers, rapists and drug dealers into the country.

Harvard's chapter of all-female sorority Kappa Alpha Theta to go gender-neutral this fall. FOX News Channel (FNC) is a 24-hour all-encompassing news service dedicated to delivering breaking news as well as political and business news. The number one network in…

According to Gallup, almost 70 percent of college students believe that colleges and universities are not friendly to free speech or representative of political diversity. But college-aged students still overwhelmingly favor having those diverse political ideologies open for dialogue on their university campuses. Now, a group of students at American University in Washington, D.C., have sought to promote ideological diversity on their campus by creating The American Agora. “Honestly, [creating the Agora] was as simple as having some ideas and wanting a place to put them at. All of us were interested in politics and debating issues out loud in our [dorm’s] lounge anyway.” It ultimately just made sense for the friends to come together and establish the Agora. When asked about his favorite column, Brad de Ramón, outreach director, said he most enjoyed writing “White News: Evaluating Charlottesville Media Coverage.” “I wrote [this piece] a week after the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, V.A., last August. James seemed enthusiastic about the podcast, noting how much fun it had been to produce during the previous year. “I honestly think the sooner we get to expanding the spectrum of views and backgrounds further, the better our site will be for it. The staff currently features nine established columnists, and executive board members write columns as well. Alex de Ramón noted that The American Agora was able to actively recruit writers from the Class of 2021 which allowed the staff columnists to grow more.

Students at Howard University occupied the campus’s Johnson Administration Building in protest in 1968. Now, current Howard students are in day seven of an occupation of their own. Other demands were more Howard-specific, and a few of those were quite far-reaching: Students want the power to “directly propose new policies and revise existing policies”; ratify all hiring of administrators, trustees, and faculty; and most of all, they want the resignation of the university’s president, Wayne A.I. Two days after that, on Thursday of last week, HU Resist students started to fill the administration building in protest. President Frederick, who had already been speaking to media and issuing statements after the news of the financial-aid scandal spread, responded to a handful of the student grievances the following day. Over the next several days, as the protest drew national attention, there was a war of statements. Faculty announced its support of the students. But many of the issues historically black colleges and universities are in no way specific to them. The students at Howard see power and want more of it. “This entire protest is dictated not by the resignation of the president,” McCollum says, “but by the ideal of student power, and letting students have a bigger voice on their university’s campus.” What’s striking—as other campuses may soon find—is not what they are asking for, but their commitment to getting it.

DeVos Wants to Right the Pendulum on Campus Sexual Assault. One assault is too many. One aggressive act of harassment is too many. And then, as happens, the movement to stand up for victims morphed into something different. The burden shifted from the accuser to the accused. But the university restricted Bonsu's movement on campus while investigating him. "Definitions of sexual wrongdoing on college campuses are now seriously over-broad," four Harvard law professors wrote in an August paper, "Fairness to All Students under Title IX," that challenged the Obama policy. "They go way beyond accepted legal definitions of rape, sexual assault, and sexual harassment. Nonetheless, the White House released a statement that applauded DeVos' decision "to overhaul the Department of Education's approach to campus sexual assault enforcement under Title IX. These efforts will produce better policy -- one that ensures that sexual assault is taken seriously on campuses without denying the accused the fundamental protections of due process."