Below is an excerpt from my op-ed piece:

Many institutions of higher learning are taking a wrong turn in embracing calls for divestment from the fossil fuel industry.

Radicalized students, faculty, and officials at universities across the country are demanding administrators divest school endowments from profitable oil companies such as Exxon Mobil, Conoco Phillips, and others.

For instance, students at Vassar College, Swarthmore College, Cornell University, and 260 other universities have called upon their financial administrators to divest from fossil fuels.

Although it is unclear how many of these schools have, or actually will divest, one thing is clear. If schools pursue investment strategies based of the feelings of their most radicalized students, faculty and administrators, the consequences could be disastrous.

Continue reading at Campus Reform.

Related articles

• Swarthmore Spinning Out of Control (With Videos) (nationalreview.com)
• Divestment Tactics Escalate: Swarthmore Board Meeting Takeover (nationalreview.com)
• Swarthmore Spinning Out of Control (grumpyelder.com)
• Swarthmore tries to estimate the price of fossil fuel divestment (insidehighered.com)

Here is an excerpt featuring my thoughts:

Gabriella Hoffman, who is a first generation American, talks in great detail about her grandparents and parents growing up in a collectivist Soviet Union. In a phone interview, Gabriella said, “Most young people would be conservatives if they understood history. I meet students everyday that don’t understand the brutality or inhumanity of communistic regimes. Since my family had to live through it, I have a deeper appreciation for the country we live in.”

I am one of 14 co-authors of the e-book. Order your copy today!

Be sure to follow Charlie Kirk, Turning Point USA, and our e-book publisher Liz Wheeler on Twitter.

Related articles

• “Hating Breitbart” Movie Premieres (rushlimbaugh.com)

Here is an excerpt:

“America is a nation of immigrants, built by immigrants and we need to honor that heritage by fixing our broken immigration system, while upholding the rule of law and championing legal immigration,” said Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) in a statement last week when offering an amendment to the Schumer-Rubio immigration bill.

Cruz, the son of a legal Cuban immigrant, is absolutely correct.

Immigration is the foundation of this great nation. Millions of immigrants from all over the world have flocked here to better their lives. Anyone who comes here and becomes American can make it if they work hard and realize their full potential. That is why legal immigration must be encouraged.

Sadly, lawmakers are more interested in trading our sovereignty for votes and political favors a la amnesty.

Continue reading at Townhall.com

Related articles

• Morning Bell: We’ve Seen the Effect of “Amnesty” Before (heritage.org)
• Senator Ted Cruz Proposes Limbaugh Amendment to the Immigration Bill (rushlimbaugh.com)
• Senate Gang of 8 Legislation: Amnesty Now, Citizenship Later Without Border Security (heritageaction.com)
• ‘Amnesty Is Amnesty’ (freebeacon.com)

Wonderful news – I will pen weekly op-ed columns on Campus Reform Online (CRO)–Leadership Institute’s news publication–each Sunday starting May 19, 2013. For those of you who don’t know, CRO is the #1 source for campus news.

Here’s more about Campus Reform:

They will focus on higher education and leftist abuses on campus. Many CRO stories have caught the attention of the Drudge Report and similar news outlets. Be sure to look out for them starting next Sunday and to follow stories my co-workers report on at CRO.

If you’re a college student and want to send a tip about a leftist abuse on campus, email contact@campusreform.org.

LIKE Campus Reform on Facebook and follow them at @CampusReform.

I’ll be attending FreedomWorks’ BlogCon Dallas conference from May 11-13 alongside fellow bloggers. While there, I’ll be moderating the “Working Together: Conservatives and Libertarians Building Coalitions That Win” panel on the 13th. Later that day, I’ll join fellow BlogCon attendees in Glenn Beck’s The Blaze TV studios as an audience member. [More about that later.]

The following day I return home to the D.C. area to speak at America’s Future Foundation’s May Roundtable. The topic is “The Student Debt Crisis.” I will be panelist alongside my friend/columnist Celia Bigelow, Heritage Foundation’s Jason Richwine, and American Council of Trustees and Alumni’s Bill Gonch. The panel will be moderated by Georgetown University student Christian Rice.

AFF members get in free, while non-AFF members are $5. Register for the event here and RSVP on Facebook.

Tune to The Blaze TV this Monday afternoon, or come to the D.C. event at Microsoft HQ in downtown!

Below is an excerpt from the article:

The American university was once regarded as the marketplace of ideas. Young, eager minds thirsty for knowledge pursued higher education to better prepare for life. The free exchange of ideas and different perspectives largely defined the academic scene in decades prior. This reputed intuition stood out from the rest as the cultivator of future leaders, innovators, and scholars.

Alas, this is not the case today.

The late conservative thinker William F. Buckley famously opined, “The academic community has in it the biggest concentration of alarmists, cranks and extremists this side of the giggle house.”

The American university has departed from its original purpose. Instead, this institution now serves as a breeding ground for complacent, goose-stepping loyalists of the political Left.

Here’s more about the new series:

The 22Q is an informal interview series with young conservatives, connected to LI, who are working in the public policy process. The 22 questions ask them to explain what they do, and how they see politics and the next generation of the conservative movement. Their opinions are their own, and are not endorsed by the Leadership Institute.

An excerpt from my interview:

Part 1: What I do

How I describe my job in 10 words
Working with students to advance conservatism on campus is rewarding

My day-to-day at work…in three sentences
Checking my email; updating our database with student contacts; reaching out to students via phone call, Facebook, or email; eating; talking with co-workers; researching and finding liberal bias.

I couldn’t do my job without
Sunny optimism. I try to be positive and happy all the time. Challenging the left can be daunting, so I try to make the best of things handed my way.

Most important moment in my career (so far)
Being mentioned on the Rush Limbaugh Show for an interview I did for FoxNews.com on January 11, 2013. He mentioned my thoughts about payroll tax expiration. I was in disbelief! My dad, a huge Rush fan, called me the moment he heard my name on the air. It was amazing.

Unexpected skill that has helped me the most
I would say that multitasking has helped me the most. Juggling many things can be difficult at times, but it has proven to be beneficial in the work I do.

The best advice I have received
My dad once said, “In order to be equal, you have to be three times better than the rest.” My parents taught me to work hard, to enjoy the fruits of my labor, and to be the best individual I could possibly be.

Continue reading at Leadership Institute.

Check out the podcast here.

Tomorrow I embark on a nine-day journey to the Northeast. I will traverse the region and visit students in Boston, New Haven, NYC, and Newark. Sadly, this territory isn’t kind to travelers of the conservative persuasion.  But in the name of freedom and liberty, we must do our best to reclaim it – especially universities there.

To quote Lord of the Rings: “…there’s some good in this world, Mr. Frodo… and it’s worth fighting for.”

Not all young people are goose-stepping Obamanites. The countless students I meet and work with are frustrated by this administration. Nevertheless their enthusiasm, their energy, and their indomitable spirit to advance conservative principles on campus will propel our movement in the right direction.

I couldn’t ask for a better or more rewarding job than this. My students in the Northeast give me hope. I empathize with them because I too was a conservative student in a heavily blue state. I know how difficult it is to advance a conservative message on campus.

That being said, we can and we must take back our campuses. Conservatism is still worth fighting for there. Don’t give up!

If I come across anything interesting or newsworthy, I’ll be sure to blog about it here. Be sure to follow my musings on Facebook or on Twitter at @Gabby_Hoffman!

Like millions of Americans, I recently completed my tax returns.  It’s not a fun process but I’m relieved it’s over. If more young people understood the problem inset in high taxes, they wouldn’t continue to flock to the political left.

President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama recently released their 2012 tax returns. Unsurprisingly, the Obama’s didn’t pay their “fair share” of taxes — only a mere 18.4 percent of their adjusted gross income ($608,611). The question beckons: what happened to paying your “fair share” in taxes, Mr. President?

President Obama’s burdensome tax policies and its effects on business owners must be taken into account. Nevertheless, we must go beyond the president’s class warfare rhetoric and take a page from history about taxes to explain why exorbitant taxation is a detriment to a healthy, thriving society.

In his treatise The Law, renowned French philosopher Frédéric Bastiat wrote why unwarranted, high taxation of a free people qualifies as legal plunder. Legal plunder is defined as the following: 

Now, legal plunder can be committed in an infinite number of ways. Thus we have an infinite number of plans for organizing it: tariffs, protection, benefits, subsidies, encouragements, progressive taxation, public schools, guaranteed jobs, guaranteed profits, minimum wages, a right to relief, a right to the tools of labor, free credit, and so on, and so on. All these plans as a whole — with their common aim of legal plunder — constitute socialism.

Unsure as to why high taxation is legal plunder? Read another excerpt from The Law:

But how is this legal plunder to be identified? Quite simply. See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them, and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime.

Then abolish this law without delay, for it is not only an evil itself, but also it is a fertile source for further evils because it invites reprisals. If such a law — which may be an isolated case — is not abolished immediately, it will spread, multiply, and develop into a system.

The person who profits from this law will complain bitterly, defending his acquired rights. He will claim that the state is obligated to protect and encourage his particular industry; that this procedure enriches the state because the protected industry is thus able to spend more and to pay higher wages to the poor workingmen.

Do not listen to this sophistry by vested interests. The acceptance of these arguments will build legal plunder into a whole system. In fact, this has already occurred. The present-day delusion is an attempt to enrich everyone at the expense of everyone else; to make plunder universal under the pretense of organizing it.

Bastiat was correct about legal plunder. This administration is set on redistributing wealth and fulfilling its goal of diminishing American free enterprise.

Americans must be cognizant of the current and equally disastrous policies in place. If this assault on free enterprise continues, the America we love and know will cease to exist.

*Excerpts taken from The Law by Frédéric Bastiat.