When I wrote my previous LI piece about Christina Hoff Sommers lecture at Georgetown, I hoped that the “trigger warnings” and “safe spaces” were the end to the attempted cen...
About: Laurel Conrad
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Laurel Conrad is the president of the Cornell Review, Cornell’s conservative news publication, and president of Network of Enlightened Women, a campus conservative women’s networking organization. She is the daughter of a retired Marine Corps officer and the oldest of four children.
Laurel has previously contributed to the Daily Caller and Cornell Insider. She will graduate with a degree in Government and minor in Asian Studies in 2014. You can follow her on twitter at @LaurelRConrad
“Safe Spaces” are unsafe for free exchange of ideas

College campuses are meant to be a place where students engage in new perspectives and critical reasoning. Or so they say.
But by labeling conservative points of view as “extremist,” “anti-feminist,” and “racist,” feminists are shutting down the dialogue on their college campuses before it even begins.
To the leftist student activists, it...
MSNBC’s Orwellian misunderstanding of Orwell’s anti-communist Animal Farm

Animal farm is a satiric, dystopian novel written in 1945 by George Orwell.
Straight from its own book jacket description, it is depicted as:
A fable about an uprising...
Hashtag Peace in Our Time

Welcome to the age of Hashtag Diplomacy.
For those unfamiliar with the concept, this is what it looks like:
The above tweet is U.S. State Department Spokeswoman Jen Psaki giving a thumbs-up to Ukraine.
It illustrates the State Department’s latest foreign policy str...
Venezuela Update: Violence, protests and … talks?
Venezuela Update: Is the end of violence finally in sight after two months of deadly anti-government protests?
In February, I highlighted the Venezuela protests with depiction of protesters taking to the streets to fight against corruption in the government, high inflation, and a high murder rate. At least three people were confirmed to have been killed during anti-government protests by...
Will Scotland’s independence referendum end the United Kingdom?
Even as Crimea votes to break from Ukraine and join Russia, Scotland is preparing to vote “yes” or “no” on independence later this year.
On September 18, 2014, essentially everyone over the age of 16 living in Scotland will have the ability to vote whether or not Scotland should be an independent...
Has “Israeli Apartheid Week” already peaked?

I’d like to re-pose the age-old question: “If Israeli Apartheid Week happens on campus and no one notices, does it make a sound?”
Israel Apartheid Week (IAW) officially took place on campuses across the U.S. over the course of February 24-March 2, although the exact boundaries of the “week” varied somewhat.
When we set...
Media largely ignores violent Venezuela crackdown on opposition

On Sunday, Florida Senator Marco Rubio took to Twitter to draw attention to the deadly street protests in Venezuela.
The tweet links to a powerful youtube...
Six Sochi hotel horrors

When journalists descended on Sochi last week, many took to Twitter to express their dismay at the state of their hotel rooms. While their conditions are hardly ideal- yellow water, bees in the honey, and more- they are certainly providing entertainment for audiences back home.
One Twitter account, @SochiProblems, has become particularly viral-...
Jesse Jackson attacks Duck Dynasty star for “white privilege”

Reverend Jesse Jackson Sr. is speaking out against Phil Robertson, star of A&E’s reality show “Ducky Dynasty,” claiming that Robertson’s comments to GQ reflect “white privilege.”
Jackson even compared Robertson to the bus driver who ordered Rosa Parks to move to the back of the bus in a statement obtained by ABC News:
“These...
Mitch McConnell reinterprets a Christmas classic, Obamacare style

This Christmas, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell offers his own spin on the “Night Before Christmas” classic.
Set to Nutcracker music, McConnell makes jabs in the reinvented tale at both President Obama and democrat opponent Alison Lundergan Grimes.
Check it out for yourself:
“Twas the night before Christmas, four years ago, liberals wanted Obamacare, but Kentucky...
Happy Thanksgiving from the LI Intern

After a long bus ride from Cornell back to Virginia yesterday, I get the rare chance today to escape the campus lefties and spend some quality time with my family. And while it’s easy to fixate on scary things like the job market I’m about to enter after graduation, today in...
In totalitarian societies, holidays serve the interest of the State

Democrats have prepared a guide to confronting Republican relatives at Thanksgiving:
#Thanksgiving is tomorrow. If you have Rush Limbaugh listening relatives, this is for you —> http://t.co/EpU0ylVhAZ
— The Democrats (@TheDemocrats) November 27, 2013
For those Democrats who are too dumb to remember the talking points, they even have a cheat sheet (h/t ...
Hillary Clinton can run, but she can’t hide, from Obamacare debacle

In an ironic twist, Bill Clinton is now distancing himself from Obamacare. In an interview earlier this month, Bill Clinton told online magazine Ozy:
I personally believe, even if it takes a change to the law, the president should honor the commitment the federal government made to those people and let them keep...
Not just Brown: The long history of liberal and anti-Israel campus shout downs

In October, Brown University protesters prevented New York City Police Chief Ray Kelly from speaking.
During Kelly’s talk, titled “Proactive Policing in America’s Biggest City,” protesters loudly chanted slogans and read prepared text, drowning out Kelly. A university...
Visualizing the 15 million people who will lose their current individual health plans

Last week, White House press secretary Jay Carney admitted that Obamacare would force around 15 million people – 5% of the US population – to drop their current insurance. This number doesn’t seem like a big deal to him, however:
“That’s the universe we’re talking about, 5 percent of the population,” Carney described....
Attacking the messenger to preserve the Matthew Shepard Hate Crime Narrative

Stephen Jimenez is the author of “The Book of Matt,” a book that calls into question the deeply ingrained narrative that the murder of Matthew Shepard was an anti-gay hate crime. The extensively researched book reveals that the Shepard anti-gay hate crime narrative may be all wrong.
Jimenez, who is gay himself, has been praised by...