Why the Attacks on Academia Matter
An illustration from the Charlie Kirk discourse as to why stories like the TAMU firing matter.
Part of a back-and-forth on my second post about the firing of a TAMU Senior Lecturer over the content of her course was focused on the question of whether the current right-wing censoriousness was just a pendulum swing from previous examples of left-wing censoriousness.
I find that comparison problematic for a number of reasons. First and foremost, I always find objections about a specific, concrete case to some vague cloud of things the other side was alleged to have done to create an impossible context for discussion.* Without details and specifics, it is essentially impossible to really have a conversation or make an argument because it becomes having to figure out which part of the amorphous cloud of what others may have done is even relevant to the conversation is almost impossible without taking hours, if not days, to sort out which counterexamples might be relevant.
I will stipulate, for the record, that there are examples in which overly zealous administrators at universities have made poor choices and fired or otherwise punished faculty members for their speech in ways that violated the First Amendment and/or academic freedom.**
However, there is a chasm between a set of poor choices by a handful of administrators or even the fact that faculties writ large are more liberal than the population as a whole,* and the combination of using the federal and state governments to dictate down to the classroom level what can be said alongside the blatant demonization of university faculty.
I will reiterate the TAMU case, we have a student citing an EO by the President, being supported by a State Legislator, all in the context of the state government legislating what can be taught in a classroom. That is not a bad decision or controversial decision by an administrator; it is leveraging the federal and state government against classroom speech so as to cause fear in the broader professoriate.
Such an example is not just the casual swing of the pendulum. For that metaphor to work, we would need a Democratic President, state legislature, etc., specifically reaching into a classroom to tell a faculty member: “You can’t say that and, by the way, you’re fired.”
One aspect of the TAMU saga was Texas State Representative Brian Harrison carrying on about “indoctrination.” This is part and parcel of an ongoing right-wing drumbeat about higher education. It is the kind of thing that led to Turning Point USA’s “Professor Watchlist” (more on that below). It is an attempt to demonize a whole class of persons.
And along those lines comes this:
This is just a gratuitous attempt by D’Souza to further politicize the assassination of Kirk and to turn unfair and undue attention to university faculty.
Worse, media reports suggest that the suspect only attended Utah Valley University (where I assume this photo was taken) for one semester. I know very little about UVU, but given my personal experience with regional universities in deeply red states, it seems rather unlikely that it was a hotbed of radical politics. The suspect was currently enrolled at Dixie Technical College. Nothing screams radicalization like a technical college.
Setting aside the absurdity of some radicalization via a professor as the root of the assassination, stop and consider how grotesque it is to suggest that teachers should be prosecuted if one of their students commits a heinous crime.
I continue to find the gross disingenuousness of people like D’Souza to be infuriating. If college campuses were indoctrination factories for the left, then both he and his Dartmouth classmate, Laura Ingraham, would likely be less obnoxious people. Likewise, some Lecturer in English who had their pronouns in their signature block should have gotten to Harrison.*** The Republican Party is filled to the brim with college graduates. In the Senate, 99% of the chamber has a bachelor’s degree or higher, and the number in the House is 96%. To listen to right-wing agitators like D’Souza and State Representative Harrison, you would think that the US Congress should be a hotbed of radical leftism [Narrator: The US Congress was, in fact, not a hotbed of radical leftism]. Every time I hear people prattle on about the liberal professoriate, I can’t help but think that the six conservatives on SCOTUS were all educated at the elite of the elites.
As noted above, Kirk’s organization, TPUSA, had a list of faculty “to expose and document college professors who discriminate against conservative students and advance leftist propaganda in the classroom.” Not surprisingly, this lead to people on the lis being harrassed. See, for example, the cases detailed in The Baltimore Banner: Maryland professors were targeted by Charlie Kirk. Now what?
See also this tweet, which is a reposting of a FB post.
While I continue to believe that Kirk’s murder was a human tragedy and a national tragedy, I also find much of the extolling of him as a champion of free speech to be more than problematic. Putting together watchlists so that the digital mob can harass those on a list for things they said is not being a free speech advocate. (More on this to come, I expect.)
None of this is to say the US academy is above reproach and criticism, as definitionally all human institutions are flawed. But this attack on higher education is dangerous and it is also foolish, since one of the drivers of US global economic power has been US higher education.
A parting note: Socrates was sentenced to exile or death for the sin of “corrupting the youth” via teaching philosophy. That is a notion that I think is worth a moment of reflection, given this general topic of discussion.
*I certainly understand that universities are far more liberal than they are conservative. What that actually means in practical terms is its own discussion. I think there are a number of reasons, most of which are benign, for why this is the case. And I think that the actual implications of this divide are not the nefarious thing that many conservatives assert.
**There may be a developing more direct comparison to BLM-related tweets leading to firings in the following via NBC News: After Charlie Kirk’s death, teachers and professors nationwide fired or disciplined over social media posts.
***Harrison holds a BA from TAMU. And while not as elite as Dartmouth, it is a top public university, ranking 51st in the latest US News ranking for national universities. I will note, for no reason, that that is not as good as the University of Texas, which is ranked 31st.
May I add U.C. Berkeley Gives Names of Students and Faculty to Government for Antisemitism Probe (NYT gift link) to the examples? The school argues that as a public institution they’re legally required to comply. That may or may not be true, but it would require heroic courage to resist. But damn the feds for asking for it.
Re your single star footnote, certainly there are echo chambers, but one could argue that for a couple of decades there was a more or less fair competition of ideas, and conservatism lost. A thought they would never entertain.
You mention, “my personal experience with regional universities in deeply red states”. I bet you have some stories you could tell. Much as I suspect I would enjoy them, I will respect your sense of propriety and enjoy such generalities as you choose to share.
One fine day in 2026, a Brazilian is arguing with an American about free speech.
“Look,” says the Brazilian, “we can criticize our president, ok? We can even publish these criticisms and our government can’t stop us or retaliate against us.”
“Big deal!” says the American. “We, too can criticize your president freely!”
He was also in the notably liberal discipline of Engineering.
I went to and later taught at the Rochester Institute of Technology. While there were some great liberal arts teachers there (and many who remain there), the average first year student in their first semester (or quarter when I was there) would take a single 101 liberal art course.
The remainder of their class load would be a general lab science (though as an engineering student he might have been in a different track), a course in their field (engineering), and some sort of maths course (again he might be in a different track because of engineering).
That would be a pretty usual 16-ish credit hour schedule.
Of those, three of the four are going to be pretty agnostic (outside of possibly a comment or two from the professor, which, given those fields, could go either way. See this write up.).
Having instructed discipline classes in design and publishing, you’re usually too busy teaching applied skills to start brainwashing students into Manchurian-Candidate-style assassins. I had a hard enough time getting them to understand the difference between CMYK and RGB color spaces.
All I’m saying is either that was the single most effective radical-anti-fascist-communist-destroy-the-patriarchy-and-white-supremacy liberal arts professor or that dog just doesn’t hunt.
Still grifters gotta grift.
@gVOR10:
I do, indeed. One that comes to mind that seems relevant: our Chancellor sent email out to all the deans, directed at the Communications and Fine Arts Dean suggesting that the Epoch Times would be a great exemplar for use in our school of journalism.
(If one is unfamiliar with Epoch Times, let’s just say that radical left, it is not.)
He also extolled Project 1776 to a large swath of leadership.
@Matt Bernius: Agreed all around.
Indeed. Will no one think of the poor grifters?
@Matt Bernius: I think that by focusing on the professors, both you and D’Souza are underestimating the effect that pink haired young women who schedule their dates between their abortions can have on a young, innocent, Christian man like the poor, misguided boy who shot Charlie Kirk (may he find his way back to God).
Speaking of pendulums, the story on the right swung so fast from the vitriol and calls for war in the immediate aftermath of the shooting to when the shooter was identified and was one of their own.
We go from Trump blaming radical leftist this and that and vowing revenge to changing the subject when asked to start bragging about the gaudy ballroom he is putting on the White House. Nancy Mace went from screeching about transgenders to saying that Kirk would want sympathy for that man who strayed from God…
It also fills my withered heart with joy to see how little anyone actually cared about Charlie Kirk — from the moment his body hit the ground, he was just an object to be used for political motives.
Also, I think it now has to be incredibly clear to Trump how his eventual passing will be celebrated. May he live with this knowledge for at least a little while before he finally strokes out.
In response to Dinesh D’Souza’s comment, if (as it is starting to appear) the alleged assassin was “radicalized” by the Groypers, would he want Nick Fuentes to be charged with abetting the murder?
I may have mentioned before, I considerably dislike the inclination of some students and faculty and adminstrators to police speech and ideas, impose political judgements as objective reality, and to “de-platform” any opposing views.
Often to a ludicrous extent.
(Banning sombreros at a fancy dress party as “inappropriate cultural appopriation”, ftlog)
I dislike much more the attempts of a government to over-ride academic freedom, and impose their dogmas.
Because, after all, academics, staff, and students can always vote with theier feet, and go somehwere more congenial.
Not to mention sensible.
This is not possible if a single national authority imposes doctrine from above.
This was the case in some of “Catholic Europe” for some centuries, and little good did it do.
It may be rather arbitrary definitions of “anti-semitic” speech or “enforced diversity” that are targeted initially.
(And, to be clear, I’d personally incline to come down like a ton of bricks on ANY ethnic or political harassment)
But anyone who expects it to stop there is mistaken, I suspect.
The lesson of history is that ideologues will push enforcement of their ideology as far as they can.
How long before any bio-medical research into vaccines becomes ultra vires?
Or any climatology that indicates anthropic CO2 emissions are a cause of climatic effects becomes a forbiden subject?
Or, if the real crazies had their way, all of post-Darwninian biology gets shitcanned?
Not to mention any comparative philosophy, history, or theology, that does not replicate the “West is Best” or some “Judeo-Christian” orthodoxy?
Personally, I actually happen to think the Western intellectual and cultural tradition has a lot to be said for it, comparatively and even absolutely.
But I’ll be damned if I’ll have those who disagree with me silenced by state fiat.
@Kathy:
There may, sadly, be a considerable vein to be mined in recycling Soviet jokes repurposed for Magastan.
The only difficulty: does Trump equate to Lenin, Stalin, or Brezhnev?
Speaking of Socrates:
The MAGA cult has lost its mind over the loss of its young prince – 50th president guaranteed! I very much fear Patel and Miller will do a Jack Ruby on the killer to prevent any inconvenient truth emerging about his true reasons for his crime.
Those darn woke libs at, uh…Dixie Technical College and their Latinx pronouns really did a number on poor Tyler Robinson. Let us pray for him.
@Ken_L:
“had him killed” is working really hard there.
As if a rather sad nutcase is somehow an extension of an assumed “leftist deep state”.
One might ask, if the “leftists” had such powers, why was not their rule instantiated decades ago, and every single right-wing opponent gunned down?
How is it that in the “leftist tyranny” of Europe of the MAGA imagination, the entire far-right goes unmolested (except when they actually break actual laws), and even gets elected?
@Ken_L: Barf emoji.
@Ken_L:
@Steven L. Taylor:
Stepping aside from the entire issue of whether or not Charles Kirk was the Socrates of our times, engaging in rational dialogue, there is the simple historical truth.
Socrates was sentenced to death by the Athenian state, which had by that point been driven almost collectively insane by a contingent combination of political and social circumstances.
He was not killed by a lone nutcase.
@JohnSF: You don’t have to convince me. But MAGA Republicans from Trump down are determined to exploit Kirk’s death, insisting it is a “watershed moment” in American history, when “the left” declared war on them. The reality that the killer was a 22 year-old from a MAGA family who appears to have acted alone is neither here nor there in the narrative they crafted within hours of Kirk being shot. The narrative is all that matters in MAGA world. It is likely to be used to justify a new round of police state actions against the Democratic Party and its supporters.
@JohnSF: Let me be clear: I was not, at all, comparing Kirk to Socrates. I was comparing the way many American conservatives talk about the professoriate.
@Steven L. Taylor: Indeed, if anyone thought I was putting Kirk in the Socrates role, I made a grave error in the OP.
@Steven L. Taylor:
Oh, I realised that.
My default mode is irony.
I am British, you know? 😉
Now, hemlock: can we get that in the faculty discipline guidelines, I wonder …
To be serious for a moment:
Kirk was killed, it seems, by a lone headcase.
Trying to make this into a imagined pogrom of the “Right” is foolish, when the “Right” actually control the US federal government.
And yet, the Right will likely try to do so, because they cannot resist the urge to grab for dominance and power.
(Same as some on the left, imuho; just not right now)
@JohnSF:
Before anyone jumps on my head over “some on the left”, I’m not thinking about the Democratic Party, or the Labour Party, or most left-of-centre.
But of the tankies, the Trots, and their various contemporary descendants and analogues.
Who piss me off almost as much as the idiot Right.
@JohnSF: Just making sure! 😉