Rocky Mountain Voice

Tag: Academic Freedom

Should professors persuade or present? Classroom neutrality questioned in Colorado
Colorado Accountability Project, Approved, Commentary, Local

Should professors persuade or present? Classroom neutrality questioned in Colorado

By Cory Gaines | Commentary, Colorado Accountability Project The article at bottom details how an adjunct professor specializing in queer studies at Colorado Mesa University resigned over a dispute involving classroom neutrality. I’ll leave it to you to read up on the dispute and come to your own decisions about the facts in the matter. From my take on the article, it seems that there might be something of a disagreement as to exactly what was said and what happened. I am also open to any civil comment you’d like to add. Please feel free to toss in your two cents on the issue, whether we agree or not. Again, without saying what the professor here did or didn’t do, let’s examine two different versions of how a class discussion could go. Contrast the following: ...
Online Platform Reverses Course After Removing Infant Mortality Vaccine Paper
Just The News, Approved, National

Online Platform Reverses Course After Removing Infant Mortality Vaccine Paper

By Greg Piper | Just the News Preprints.org, operated by open-access publisher MDPI, cited its "withdrawal policy" as a whole, but no specific reason, for removing the paper by Children's Health Defense researchers. They found worse risks by race and sex. Twelve years after a senior scientist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention admitted through his lawyers to withholding a "statistically significant finding" on black babies from his peer-reviewed study finding no link between autism and vaccination, a preprint server that hosts research before peer review erased a study that also found a racial vaccination link. Preprints.org, operated by the Swiss open-access publisher MDPI, took down the study, "Increased Mortality Associated with 2-Month Old Inf...
Fascist Regime? CU Boulder Newsletter Tests University Speech Policies
Rocky Mountain Voice, State, Top Stories

Fascist Regime? CU Boulder Newsletter Tests University Speech Policies

By Shaina Cole | Contributing Writer, Rocky Mountain Voice The episode has sharpened attention on a familiar but unresolved issue in higher education: when speech delivered through an official university platform stops being personal expression and starts carrying institutional weight. “I’m not trying to be divisive, controversial, or polarizing,” insisted Jennifer Ho, director of CU Boulder’s Center for Humanities & the Arts. But the January newsletter sent under the center’s name and distributed through official university email quickly did exactly that, leveling sweeping accusations against the federal government and blurring the line between personal opinion and institutional speech. Academic centers send newsletters all the time. What set this one apart...
Fort Lewis College Reverses Course and Quickly Approves TPUSA Chapter After Student Backlash
Fox News, Approved, Local

Fort Lewis College Reverses Course and Quickly Approves TPUSA Chapter After Student Backlash

By Joshua Q. Nelson | Fox News The decision came after a petition launched backing TPUSA, garnering over 1,000 signatures A Colorado college student government reversed its decision to block a Turning Point USA (TPUSA) chapter during an emergency meeting on Friday night. The Associated Students of Fort Lewis College (ASFLC) voted to approve the TPUSA chapter after previously rejecting senior Jonah Flynn’s proposal to register the group with the university. "It was strange. They put us in a tiny room, with at least 100 people being forced to wait outside. Tons of local conservatives, students and community members. Inside the meeting, we got to speak briefly, and they immediately voted and unanimously approved it," Flynn told Fox News Digital. Flynn planned to appeal t...
CSU faculty under fire as students allege “hostile environment” in anti-racism course
The Chronicle of Higher Education, Approved, Local

CSU faculty under fire as students allege “hostile environment” in anti-racism course

By: Emma Pettit | The Chronicle of Higher Education After taking a social-work course at Colorado State University in 2023, one student had striking words to share in a course evaluation: “I don’t feel safe in this classroom,” they wrote, adding that “judgment and rejection” came from the two instructors. “This makes me shut down.” One of those instructors was Quinn Hafen, then a Ph.D. student at Colorado State and now an assistant professor at the University of Wyoming. Hafen, who uses they/them pronouns, was surprised by the comment. Their counterpart, a senior instructor named Marie Villescas Zamzow, was not. She receives this sort of comment every semester. “I can actually predict who’s going to write that it’s not a safe learning environment,” she said, according to a re...
DEI grants under fire: AFL targets NIH-funded “junk science” in $30M purge
Rocky Mountain Voice, Approved, National, Top Stories

DEI grants under fire: AFL targets NIH-funded “junk science” in $30M purge

By Shaina Cole | Contributing Writer, Rocky Mountain Voice America First Legal (AFL) has brought renewed attention to the termination of 18 National Institutes of Health (NIH) grants in 2025, sharing a detailed report in a thread posted on X on July 16. The group’s findings highlight a series of projects it characterizes as race-based and ideologically driven—grants funded during the Biden Administration and later canceled under new Trump Administration directives. https://twitter.com/america1stlegal/status/1945302705427099843?s=61 The AFL thread meticulously documents many of the terminated grants, spotlighting specific examples that have drawn significant scrutiny.  Among them is a $740,000 grant awarded to New York University to assess diversity effects in medical sch...
Gazette editorial board: AG Weiser defends censure-shamed CU regent over public health warning
Local, Approved, gazette.com

Gazette editorial board: AG Weiser defends censure-shamed CU regent over public health warning

By The Gazette Editorial Board | Commentary, The Gazette For a politician with his eyes on a higher prize, Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser sure seemed shortsighted the other day when he took to social media in defense of the indefensible — a University of Colorado regent rightly rebuked by her peers for her abuse of office. Readers might recall the CU Board of Regents recently voted 7-1 to censure first-term board member Wanda James, a Democrat who represents Denver’s 1st Congressional District. James, arguably the state’s most politically ambitious pot dealer, has behaved at times as if she represents the marijuana industry rather than her district — and it finally backfired on her. The owner of a Denver marijuana retail outlet, James unconscionably attempted this year to s...

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