We recently reported that the lack of conservative speakers at graduation ceremonies nationwide had gotten so bad, even the Los Angeles Times noticed.

The newspaper published several reader letters in response to the observation:

Steve Murray, Huntington Beach:

It’s an ironic turnaround. When I was in college, students demonstrated for free speech on campus. Now students from liberal arts schools such as Swarthmore, where Hassett is an alumnus, protest against speakers with conservative views. An example closer to home was when students disrupted a speech by the Israeli ambassador to the U.S. at UC Irvine in 2010.

Do college students today lack the ability to listen to and debate opinions contrary to their own? Are their opinions so lacking in depth that even moderate conservative speakers can’t be given a chance at free speech?

I wonder if colleges are really educating thinking citizens.

Alfred Sils, Woodland Hills:

Does Hassett actually believe that it is the mission of American universities to “educate reliable Democratic votes”? If so, his Op-Ed piece goes a long way toward explaining why the GOP is becoming a largely regional party.

What would Republican speakers convey to a graduating class? Would they support the attack on women’s rights, the return to health insurance exclusions based on preexisting conditions, or a life of work with decreasing Social Security and Medicare benefits to allow for lower taxes on the wealthy?

Hassett has put the cart before the horse. Perhaps Republicans are not invited to give many commencement speeches because they have nothing constructive to say to graduates who have learned to think critically.

Jeff Pollak, La Crescenta:

I think Hassett misses the larger picture. There is only one question anyone in the audience wants to ask as speaker after speaker grinds through a torturous commencement ceremony: How long is this speech going to take?

It’s a scientific fact that hot air is neither conservative nor liberal — but it is plentiful on college campuses in mid-May.

Frances E. Murphy, Monterey Park:

If Hassett hoped to produce crocodile tears from me, his Op-Ed article had the felicitous effect of giving me hope for the future of our country. Perhaps the next generation of political leaders will come from this group of very liberal and knowledgeable students he and others like him so eagerly try to discredit. Hassett’s article made my 86-year-old liberal heart beat faster with hope.

A professor of music just gave new meaning to the phrase, “Out of tune”.

The New York City-based instructor responded to online criticism with a humorous video in which he told students their parents should have “slapped them around” when they were children. Campus Reform contributor Spencer Schredder has the details:

A professor of music at a public school in New York City responded to online criticism with a humorous video in which he told students their parents should have “slapped them around” when they were children.

“What do you mean I’m not cultivating?” asked Baruch College music Professor Andrew Tomasello in response to criticism on the popular professor review site RateMyProfessor.com. “Your parents should have slapped you around when you were younger.”

CLICK HERE TO WATCH:  “Teacher Strikes Back”

Tomasello said he agreed to make the video for the popular “Professors Strike Back” section of the site, after he was approached by MTV in 2007.

“I was performing a role,” said Tomasello, who has been teaching at Baruch College for 31 years. “That performance was a series of jokes by a character I was playing. I guess I was pretty believable as that character.”

“Notice that I’m in the Department of PERFORMING Arts,” he added. “Do I hear ‘Oscar nomination?’”

Tomasello’s feedback on Rate My Professor is overall positive based on 246 reviews. On a 5 scale, he is a 3.3 overall, 3.2 in helpfulness, and a 3.4 in clarity.

Plenty of reviews mention that he is either “awesome” or “a great guy,” but some are more critical.

For example, one student wrote he “represents the worst side of a person.”

“Not cultivating at all,” wrote another.

In the video Tomasello also argues that his students should be grateful he comes to class at all.

“I don’t have to come to class,” he added. “I don’t have to teach.

“Do you know what happens every other Thursday?” he asked. “Every other Thursday I get a direct deposit check from the state of New York into my bank account.  I do not have to come to class and that check appears. I decide to come to class, I decide to teach you.”

Many students at Baruch College pay upwards of $30k annually for tuition and room and board.

Tomasello receives a salary of $96,370 annually, according to data transparency group Find The Data.

The kicker of this story is that DePaul is a private university. Welcome to Chicagoland.

Robby Soave of The Daily Caller reports.

Chicago taxpayers could finance private university’s sports arena

Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s plan to revitalize the Chicago area includes the controversial use of public funds to build a new sports arena for DePaul University — a private, Catholic institution.

If Emanuel gets his way, the city will spend over $100 million developing an arena for the DePaul Blue Devils. The university will chip in $70 million. The finished arena will have multiple uses, doubling as DePaul’s basketball headquarters and a public event space.

The city’s portion of the bill would be paid through public funds generated from taxes on local businesses, and tax-increment financing. TIF is a controversial financing option that assumes a redevelopment project will increase surrounding real estate values, and uses the projected increase in property tax revenues to pay for the project.

The problem with Emanuel’s plan? Some residents don’t want a new sports arena.

“Our biggest concern is killing the neighborhood with a venue that sits vacant for most of its useful life and, the only time it is used, it’ll be largely an alcohol-focussed sporting venue that will bring unwanted rowdiness, security and parking issues,” said Tina Feldstein, president of the Prairie District Neighborhood Alliance, in a statement to The Chicago Tribune.

Taxpayers have every right to object to the city spending their money on the development of a private sports arena, said a spokesperson for The Illinois Policy Institute, a free market think tank.

“Taxpayers shouldn’t be forced to subsidize a sports arena or any other private entity that they may never step foot in,” wrote Brian Costin, director of government reform at the institute, in an email to The Daily Caller News Foundation.

One concern about the “pornification” of college campuses is that it is filtering down to high schools.

One Florida high school, however, is bucking that trend. The Daily Caller’s Education Editor Eric Owens has these details:

Is a cigar sometimes just a cigar? That debate will remain unresolved, but The Daily Caller can say with confidence that a banana is definitely not always just a banana at North Marion High School near Ocala, Fla.

School district officials suspended North Marion High teacher Jonathan Hampton for three days without pay after he allegedly used a banana to touch a female student on the head during class, reports Ocala.com.

Hampton was teaching an advanced, college-level course at the time. The theme of the discussion that day was the Freudian ramifications of Ken Kesey’s 1962 novel “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.”

According to a May 13, 2013 discipline letter obtained by local CBS-affiliate WKMG, Hampton “rubbed a student’s head and neck area with a banana” while the topic was “cylinder objects, phalluses and/or sex symbols.”

The unidentified student’s parents reported the incident on May 6, some three months after it happened. According to the school district, they complained because their daughter felt uncomfortable. It’s not clear what factors caused them to wait three months to lodge their grievance.

A district representative said that Hampton was suspended because, given the totality of the circumstances, school officials had determined that he made inappropriate use of the banana.

The discipline letter written by deputy superintendent Rick Lankford suggested that other students had complained that Hampton’s college-level coursework has gone beyond community norms with “excessive frequency, causing discomfort to many of your students.”

Some parents and community members side firmly with the school district.

“That is disgusting, very disgusting,” said Dale Johnson, identified by WKMG as a grandmother. “I don’t think he should be allowed to teach kids. You don’t do stuff like that and get away with it.”

Hampton did not speak with local media but his attorney Mark Fiedelholtz did, telling a much different story.

“He doesn’t recall ever touching the student with a banana, but if he did it would be to get their attention,” Fiedelholtz told WKMG.

“There was nothing else to it,” he also said, according to Ocala.com.

A debate on President Obama now focuses on which scandal-ridden President he is most like:  Richard Nixon or Warren Harding.

However, hope springs eternal among some members of elite academia.  George Washington University student Katherine Rodriguez shares some dreams of the faculty at her school.

A handful of George Washington University political and history professors largely support the idea of adding President Barack Obama’s face to Mount Rushmore – just not quite yet.

According to a survey conducted by The College Fix, three out of the 10 George Washington University history and political science professors questioned via email replied it’s simply too soon for Obama’s likeness to be immortalized on Mount Rushmore National Memorial.

But he very well could and should be added – eventually – the three educators said.

“Historical judgments take time to form and Obama is still in office,” said history professor Edward Berkowitz. “It could be that he will be one of the great presidents, worthy of having his likeness carved on a mountain, but certainly not yet.”

Professor Paul Wahlbeck, a professor and chairman of the political science department, said he is “reluctant to venerate political leaders while or shortly after they served,” but still remains optimistic.

“History undoubtedly will accord President Obama a special place by virtue of being the first African American President,” Wahlbeck said in an email to The College Fix.

The three professors seemed united that a president’s legacy should not appear prematurely.

Political Science Professor Robert Stoker, who specializes in social policy and authored an article in January claiming that Social Security does not add to the nation’s debt, voiced skepticism about venerating Obama’s legacy too soon.

…Dedicated in 1941, Mount Rushmore, located in the Black Hills of South Dakota, has only four faces etched into eternity at this time: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln. To be added to that list would be one of the highest honors bestowed on any American, alive or dead.With that, perhaps it’s no surprise that some professors at George Washington University can eventually see Obama – a democrat and America’s first black president – added to Rushmore sometime in the future.

The university has a reputation as a school with an inclination for liberal bias, where two gay students took aim at a campus priest, a law professor taught students how to lobby for Obama policies, and an abortionist practices on campus grounds next to a residence hall.

According to the Federal Election Commission, professors funneled $132,702 into Barack Obama’s campaign in the 2012 election cycle.

Dinesh D’Souza is a conservative pundit who most famously produced 2016: Obama’s America, a movie that details potential reasons for the current President’s political motives.

In a rare campus appearance by a conservative, Souza recently addressed more than 80 people at Northwestern Univeristy before answering about a dozen questions almost equally divided...

Cecillia Wang, Director of the ACLU’s Immigrant Rights Project, has written an ACLU blog entry, “Reflections of Another Affirmative Action Baby,” describing the wonders of the new world “diversity” opened up for her as an undergraduate at Berkeley.

...

It’s good to know there are college students in America who have rejected the BDS insanity that has infected so many college campuses.

This report comes via the Camera blog, Snapshots.

Algemeiner and JNS: CAMERA Launches New Student Website

The Algemeiner and JNS report:

The Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA)...

The list of MOOCs (Massive online courses) seems to be expanding as rapidly as the known universe.

In The American Conservative, Wheaton College Professor Alan Jacobs shares his lack of enthusiasm for this development.

When I think about turning all this into a MOOC, my first thought is: How easy that would be....

Some stunts are better in theory than reality.

Using the internet to put-together a prank involving thousands of crickets, some Kentucky high school students are getting a major time-out. Eric Owens of The Daily Caller has a report:

Seven seniors at East Carter High School in the rural northeast corner of Kentucky were...

It looks like one New York professor is giving new meaning to the term “outsourcing”.

Sarah Hofmann of The Daily Caller reports on the faculty member who is selling his lab’s discoveries to a Chinese firm.

A New York University professor and a lab engineer have been released on bail on Monday after...

Given the fact that there are millions of college students now saddled with debt and no job prospects, it’s difficult to disagree with this estimation.

Vivian Giang of Business Insider reports.

EXPERT: 85% Of College Students Are Wasting Their Time And Money

We talked to the one of the most voc...

Justifiably, the “pornification” of our campuses is getting more public attention.

We feature items from The College Fix regularly. Its editor, Nathan Harden, was recently interviewed by LifeSiteNews.com’s Ashley Herzog on the subject, starting with Yale University.

[Nathan Harden] exposed how Yale women are constantly degraded on campus. They are valued for their...

Legal Insurrection has covered Elizabeth Warren’s wrongheaded approach to student loans extensively. Today, in a new post at his blog, Walter Russell Mead offered his opinion on Warren and the president.

Obama and Elizabeth Warren Feed the College Beast

College students may see their debt rise sharply overnight, as the interest rate for...

One of the contributing factors of high unemployment among recent college grads is out of control government spending. Note to college students, beware public employees who want more public spending.

Amanda Achtman of Intercollegiate Review reports.

Commencement speaker exhorts students to advocate more public spending

What makes a university great? Is it being part...