In the 1960s, America’s institutions of higher learning drove the civil rights movement and the push to get the country out of Vietnam by championing free speech.
Today, however, some of the same Leftists who were marching on those campuses as young Marxists now either run the universities or teach at them. Our colleges and universities have become little more than indoctrination centers and propaganda factories for Leftist ideology, shunning all competing ideals, visions, or thoughts even to the point of ‘canceling’ tenured professors.
One of the latest victims of a Leftist campaign of harassment and silencing is Prof. William A. Jacobson for the ‘sin’ of criticizing the Black Lives Matter movement as ‘racist,’ which is the same tactic and word all Leftists use to denounce anyone who dares to challenge the orthodoxy.
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He’s under assault from other faculty at Cornell University because he’s not a bot or conformist and dared to offer his own views on a movement that is not above reproach (because no movement or ideology is above criticism).
“These commentators express rage over the sporadic looting that has taken place amidst the largely peaceful protests, calling for organized manhunts to track down those responsible. Theirs is a form of racism that gives cover to those police who use their batons and tear gas and rubber bullets and fists to silence and maim their critics,” 21 Cornell professors wrote in a June 9 letter.
‘These commentators are the defenders of institutionalized racism and violence. They are entitled to their viewpoints. We do not name them, so as to deprive them of a larger platform for their racist speech.
Prof. Jonathan Turley, a liberal who teaches the Constitution among other subjects at Georgetown University Law School, blasted the effort to have Jacobson fired or disciplined.
In a column, Turley ripped into the signatories of the letter:
Not a word about academic freedom or free of speech; not a suggestion that critics of these protests could have anything other than racist motivations. It is the antipathy of the intellectual foundations for higher education. Rather than address the merits of arguments, you attack those with opposing views personally and viciously. That has become a standard approach to critics on our campuses. Unless you agree with the actions of the movement, you are per se racist. It is a mantra that is all too familiar historically: if you are not part of the resistance, you are reactionary … or, in this period, racist.
The professors, of course, have every right to to denounce writers for what they believe are racist elements or messaging in their writings. However, they specifically go after scholars who they believe defend “institutionalized racism and violence” and “express rage over the sporadic looting that has taken place.” That would encompass what they describe as seemingly “informed commentary” supporting institutions of a racist society.
Interestingly, Turley noted that two of the signatories to the letter denouncing Jacobson — Professors Mark H. Jackson and Cortelyou Kenney – actually teach free speech and expression at the Cornell First Amendment Clinic.
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While Turley said he’s not familiar with Jacobson’s writings, “What is disturbing is the effort to silence Jacobson because he holds such opposing views.”
We have all but lost our academic centers because they have been thoroughly permeated by an authoritarian ideology and mindset that does not permit any disagreement – kind of the the system they have in China.
