The New Red Scare

The Princeton U president writes in The Atlantic magazine:

The United States is home to the best collection of research universities in the world. Those universities have contributed tremendously to America’s prosperity, health, and security. They are magnets for outstanding talent from throughout the country and around the world.

The Trump administration’s recent attack on Columbia University puts all of that at risk, presenting the greatest threat to American universities since the Red Scare of the 1950s. Every American should be concerned.

The rise of the American research university in the 20th century depended on many factors, including two crucial turning points. The first, at the start of the century, was the development of strong principles of academic freedom that allowed people and ideas to be judged by scholarly standards, not according to the whims or interests of powerful trustees, donors, or political officials.

This is the same college that fired a tenured classics professor because he denounced a student group, the Black Justice League, as “a small local terrorist organization”. Or maybe it was because he married one of his former students, it is hard to tell. At any rate, Princeton has already sold out its academic freedom.

Columbia and Harvard sold out even worse.

So why is he so upset? The Trump administration demands that recipients of federal funds do not racially discriminate, support free speech, and stop harassing Jews.

These colleges get a lot of federal money, with not much accountability to what taxpayers want. I think that they will have to face some cutbacks. Princeton is extremely rich, and does not need any federal money.

The Red Scare of the 1950s primarily affected professors who advocated Communism at a time that Communist countries were doing horrible things and were enemies of the USA. I am in favor of free speech, but the Commies were terrible and did not deserve taxdollar support.

Toddler Expelled for Transphobia

The London Daily Mail reports:

A toddler has been kicked out of nursery after being accused of transphobia, new figures reveal.

The child, aged either three or four, was suspended for 'abuse against sexual orientation and gender identity', data from the Department for Education shows.

The offences took place in the 2022-23 academic year at a state school, according to The Telegraph.

Statistics indicate 94 pupils at similar primary institutions were suspended or permanently excluded for transphobia or homophobia in the same year. ...

Sally and Nigel Rowe, whose sons attended a Church of England school, said they received a letter from the headteacher and chair of governors which declared pupils could be designated the term if they showed 'an inability to believe a transgender person is actually a ''real'' female or male.'

Most Christians do not believe in transgenderism.

French Lawfare Wrecks Election

CNN reports:

French far-right figurehead Marine Le Pen has been banned from running for political office for five years after being found guilty of embezzling European Union funds, in a politically explosive ruling that has shattered her hopes of winning the presidency in 2027. ...

The court’s presiding judge, Bénédicte de Perthuis, said Le Pen’s actions amounted to a “serious and lasting attack on the rules of democratic life in Europe, but especially in France.” She said Le Pen’s immediate ban on standing for office was tied to “democratic public unrest” that would result from the election of a person convicted of embezzlement.

Le Pen slammed the ruling as a purely “political decision” during an appearance on French TV station TF1 on Monday evening.

Those judge comments make it obvious that the decision was political. The purpose was to keep her from winning the next election. The EU could have withdrawn the money, if it did not like how she was spending it.

US President Donald Trump said on Monday that Le Pen’s conviction was a “very big deal.”

“She was banned from running for five years and she’s the leading candidate — that sounds like this country,” he told reporters in the Oval Office.

Also like Romania and Brazil, where lawfare blocked right-wing candidates.

Nothing in the article justifies calling her "far-right". She is more center-right, and does not advocate anything radical.