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.
