All posts tagged "Universities"

A survey of higher education faculty in the South found professors are concerned about the political environment around higher education, with some fearing for their physical safety.

The annual survey from the American Association of University Professors included an open-ended question that allowed faculty to detail the problems they’re facing. Compared with previous years, there was a significant spike in faculty scared not only for their careers but also for their physical safety.

“I teach a subject that is now considered ‘controversial,’” a professor in North Carolina wrote. “As a result, I have had a non-student with a gun enter my classroom to intimidate me. I have received an email death threat from a student.”...

UNC Chapel is immediately reinstating a professor suspended in response to a dubious link to celebrations of conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s assassination.

The university said in an email Friday morning that following a “threat assessment,” the university found there was no basis to conclude that Dwayne Dixon, a teaching associate professor in the Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, “poses a threat to university students, staff and faculty or has engaged in conduct that violates university policy.”

Dixon had received notification on Monday from Interim Provost James W. Dean Jr. that he was being placed on indefinite administrative leave with pay due to “recent reports and expressions of concerns regarding your alleged advocacy of politically motivated violence.”...

Following President Donald Trump’s designation of “antifa” as a domestic terrorist organization, the president issued a memorandum that highlighted the assassination of Charlie Kirk as an example of rising political violence, while calling for “a new law enforcement strategy that investigates all participants in these criminal and terroristic conspiracies.”

Released on Sept. 25, the memorandum claims “anti-fascism” is an organizing force behind a “pattern of violent and terroristic activities.”

John Brown Gun Clubs, a decentralized network of armed leftists, would seem natural targets for any crackdown led by the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Forces. ...

False reports of active shooters that put Villanova University in Philadelphia and the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga on lockdown and saw law enforcement swarming over campuses last week were likely perpetrated by an online swatting group called “Purgatory,” extremism researchers say.

Five Purgatory members hosted a voice call on Discord, a platform popular with gamers, on Aug. 21 to an audience of 41 people, livestreaming the bogus calls to authorities at Villanova and Tennessee, according to a report by Marc-André Argentino, a Canadian researcher.

Using a VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) service that masks caller identity and location, a Purgatory leader with the screenname “Gores” made calls reporting active shooters, per a report by the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, or GPAHE, which also monitored the chat. ...

Twenty-three years ago, pioneers in artificial intelligence received an invitation to a Caribbean conference funded by “some rich guy.”

Now there is dismay among those who attended the three-day St. Thomas Common Sense Symposium in the U.S. Virgin Islands in April 2002 — because that “rich guy” was Jeffrey Epstein, the financier later convicted as a child sex offender who faced federal sex trafficking charges when he killed himself in 2019.

Amid swirling scandal, as President Donald Trump resists calls to release FBI files on his former close friend, two participants in the St. Thomas symposium told Raw Story what they remembered, having never before discussed the event with the media....

Now that Donald Trump is days away from retaking the White House, U.S. colleges and universities are said to be bracing for the impact of Trump's vow to end "wokeness" in higher education.

Colleges in red states, in particular, are ditching their diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) plans in a move that "both conservative and liberal politicians say" could be a "road map for the rest of the country," according to an ABC News report.

The report continued, "Dozens of diversity, equity and inclusion programs have already closed in states including Alabama, Florida, Kentucky, North Carolina, Iowa, Nebraska and Texas. In some cases, lessons about racial and gender identity have been phased out. Supports and resources for underrepresented students have disappeared. Some students say changes in campus climate have led them to consider dropping out."...