The newly formed President's Advisory 1776 Commission just released its report. The group was chaired by Churchill historian and Hillsdale College President Dr. Larry P. Arnn. The vice chair was Dr. Carol M. Swain, a retired professor of political science. (Full disclosure: I was a member of the commission.) The unanimously approved conclusions focused…

Take CFIF’s 10-Question Supreme Court Quiz and test your knowledge of our Nation’s Highest Court. (Answer key may be found at the bottom) 1. How many Justices comprise the U.S. Supreme Court? a. Five b. Six c. Nine d. Eleven 2. How many times has Congress changed the number of justices comprising…

The outcome of November's election will likely determine the role of racial preferences in the college admissions process. Voters have a clear choice. The Trump administration wants an applicant's grades and achievements to matter most. The Obama-Biden administration had urged colleges to tilt the scale in favor of minority applicants. Now Joe Biden…

When mobs tore down a statue of Ulysses S. Grant and defaced a monument to African American veterans of the Civil War, many people wondered whether the protesters had ever learned anything in high school or college. Did any of these iconoclasts know the difference between Grant and Robert E. Lee? Could they recognize the name "Gettysburg"…

Take our 14-Question Quiz to test your knowledge of our National Standard. (Answer key may be found at the bottom)  1. On which one of the following days in 1777 did Congress pass the resolution establishing the American flag? a. June 14 b. July 4 c. September 17 d. December 7 2. When did Congress officially…

"Socialist!" is no longer a McCarthyite slur. Rather, the fresh celebrity "Squad" of newly elected identity-politics congresswomen — Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) — often either claim to be socialists or embrace socialist ideas…

President Donald Trump told a rally last week: "We are all Americans. We all share the same home. We all share the same heart." He cautioned that "the radical Democrats are trying to tear this country apart" with their divisive identity politics. Warning to parents: Left-wing activists are using these same divisive tactics to target…

This week, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez claimed that it was "literally easier" for her to win the congressional election than pay off her student loan debt — which says something unfortunate about both the cost of college and the electorate's choices. Ocasio-Cortez was commenting on Sen. Bernie Sanders' new plan to eliminate $…

Presidential contender Elizabeth Warren's strategy is to win the Democratic nomination by promising the most free stuff. Monday, she upped the ante. She's offering a whopping $50,000 student loan forgiveness for nearly everyone who borrowed for college or graduate school. That's old-fashioned Tammany Hall-style bribery — handing out dollars…

This week, no story gripped Americans’ collective attention more than "Operation Varsity Blues" revelations that celebrities and wealthy parents lied and bribed their children’s way into elite colleges over the past decade.  According to federal prosecutors, over thirty rich and famous families paid approximately $25 million…

Colleges and universities that limit freedom of speech are about to get clobbered big time. President Donald Trump came out swinging on Saturday against the higher-education establishment for violating our nation's most fundamental value: free expression, guaranteed in the Constitution First Amendment. "I am proud to announce that I will be very…

No consent. No disclosure. No escape. For legions of unwitting students and teachers across the country, this is the dangerous, de facto data policy Google has imposed over their school districts. An estimated 80 million students and teachers are now signed up for free "G Suite for Education" accounts (formerly known as Google Apps for Education…

Students wrongly accused of sexual misconduct by campus disciplinary systems stacked in favor of the accuser are winning vindication in court. Judges are tossing out the life-ruining punishments meted out by these "guilty until proven innocent" campus tribunals.  This month, Judge Amul Thapar of the federal Sixth Circuit appeals court…

"I also have a dream." This rallying cry, handwritten on a simple white placard held up by an Asian-American mom at a protest this week against liberal New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio's plan to radically transform New York City's public schools, says it all. A new civil rights struggle in education has exploded — yet the national…

Educrat (ED-yoo-krat) noun, usually pejorative. A government school official or administrator whose primary function is to spend tax dollars telling other parents what to do with their children. Beltway education bureaucrats abhor families who choose to keep their kids out of public schools — unless it's to grandstand over gun control.…

While congresscritters expressed outrage at Facebook's intrusive data grabs during Capitol Hill hearings with Mark Zuckerberg this week, not a peep was heard about the Silicon Valley-Beltway theft ring purloining the personal information and browsing habits of millions of American schoolchildren. It doesn't take undercover investigative journalists…

It's elementary. Education control freaks will use any excuse to crack down on competition. With two million K-12 students now educated at home (including our 9th grade son), the temptation to exploit the most marginal cases of alleged child abuse by home-schoolers has proven irresistible to statist politicians and government apologists. Take the…

Take our 12-Question Christmas Quiz and test your knowledge of Christmas-related Americana. (Answer key may be found at the bottom) 1. In which one of the following years did Congress declare Christmas to be a federal holiday? a. 1776 b. 1781 c. 1870 d. 1890 2. The iconic rosy-cheeked picture of Santa Claus…

The U.S. Justice Department finally is confronting Harvard University and other elite colleges that blatantly discriminate against Asian-American applicants with a quota system. To get into Harvard, students of Asian heritage have to score hundreds of points higher on competitive exams than non-Asian applicants with similar or even inferior academic…

Good news for college men. You're again welcome on campus. On Friday, Sept. 22, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos ripped up the Obama administration's one-sided rules on how colleges and universities handle accusations of sexual assault and misconduct. The rules, imposed in 2011, were so stacked against the accused—usually young men—that…

George Orwell once observed, "There are some ideas so absurd that only an intellectual could believe them."  Were Orwell alive today, perhaps he would revise his adage to, "There are some ideas so manifestly true that only a college professor could deny them."  Consider the professorial community's latest collective…

"The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race."   Although just ten years old, the words of Chief Justice John Roberts writing for the majority in Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1 have already ascended into the pantheon of expressions of America…

According to The New York Times, the civil rights division of the Trump administration's Justice Department is going to ramp up investigating and sue universities over affirmative-action admissions policies deemed discriminatory against "white applicants." Incidentally, nothing in the story backs up the Times' assertion that "white…

Springtime may be in bloom, but snowflakes never go out of season at America's most prestigious colleges and universities. Quivering students at the University of Notre Dame launched a protest last week against the school's decision to invite Vice President Mike Pence as commencement speaker. Activist Imanne Mondane told the campus newspaper that…

There is no way to prove this, but see if you agree with me: The average American parent would be glad to see his public high school celebrate Martin Luther King Day with tributes to the Civil Rights movement, lectures on the history of slavery and Jim Crow and discussions of the challenges faced by blacks and other minorities in America today. Actually…

Public schools beleaguered by waves of refugees will get a breather thanks to President Trump's executive order suspending refugees from entering the U.S. for 120 days. And under Trump's new policy, when the U.S. reopens its doors to refugees, local communities will be consulted. That beats the Obama administration's dictatorial approach, which has…

There's something perverse about an ideology that views the disposing of an unborn child in the third trimester of pregnancy as an indisputable right but the desire of parents to choose a school for their kids as zealotry. Watching President-elect Donald Trump's pick for education secretary, Betsy DeVos, answer an array of frivolous questions this…

Nothing so epitomizes the politically correct gullibility of our times as the magic word "diversity." The wonders of diversity are proclaimed from the media, extolled in the academy and confirmed in the august chambers of the Supreme Court of the United States. But have you ever seen one speck of hard evidence to support the lofty claims?…

Back in the days of the Cold War between the Communist bloc of nations and the Western democracies, the Communists maintained pervasive restrictions around Eastern Europe that were aptly called an "iron curtain," isolating the people in its bloc from the ideas of the West and physically obstructing their escape. One of the few things that…

Bad teachers. We've all had one. A Connecticut judge is ordering the state to stop spending money on teachers who can't or won't teach. State Superior Court Judge Thomas Moukawsher ruled last week that Connecticut must overhaul how it evaluates and pays public school teachers, including expediting firing the worst performers. Connecticut claims 98…