The lefties don’t much like it now that the shoe is on the other foot.

https://walterblock.substack.com/p/left-wing-academic-chickens-roosting?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

WALTER BLOCK

It takes little effort to demonstrate that university leftists have for lo these many years been brutalizing, canceling, and otherwise obstructing their academic colleagues who do not subscribe to DEI, cultural and economic Marxism, political correctness and all of their other shibboleths. The former have for decades been firing, not hiring in the first place, not promoting, imposing re-education camps, diversity statements, on the latter. All we need to do to establish these claims is to mention a few high-profile names (Peter Boghossian, Erika Christakis, Nicholas Christakis, Bruce Gilley, Charles Murray, Jordan Peterson, Amy Wax) who have been publicly victimized by such boorish and nasty behavior. We could also consult the publications of such researchers as Mitchell Langbert who demonstrates the vast professorial ideological imbalance which plague US universities. For literally hundreds of additional non “progressive” professors victimized by campus leftists, see David Acevedo (I am mentioned on this list).

              Nor is it difficult to establish that conservative political forces have been negatively reacting to these incursions. Only one name be mentioned in this context: Ron DeSantis.

              The reaction from the leftist bullies has been predictable. They feel hard done by; they maintain they have been unjustly dealt with. They are whining and crying to mommie.

For example, according to Andrew Hartman, a professor of history at Illinois State University “Complaints about social justice in academe go back decades. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the phrase ‘political correctness,’ which is akin to ‘woke,’ became widespread. But the difference between then and now is that in the 1990s, conservatives used public persuasion, not legislation, to bring awareness to what they saw as problems. The current effort in Florida to curb certain university activities by passing laws and issuing requests for DEI-related information is “ultimately, or at least potentially, extremely threatening to academic freedom in ways that nothing during the ‘80s and ‘90s was.”

              In the view of Kristen A. Renn, a professor at Michigan State University and a specialist in lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender college-student issues: “What I find most troubling is that DeSantis is putting out a blueprint for other governors and state legislatures, He’s doing these things in ways that anybody else can pick this up and do it.”

              And stated Barrett J. Taylor, an associate professor of counseling and higher education at the University of North Texas: “But the extent of information — including employee names, salaries, and internal communications — that Florida’s politicians are seeking on DEI work does seem novel. That’s a different level of state intrusion into institutional independence.”

Here is the view of Francie Diep and Emma Pettit, journalists at the left-wing Chronicles of Higher Education: “The year before, the governor (De Santis) signed a law that permits students to record lectures for the purpose of filing a complaint. In recent interviews, Florida instructors referred to the law frequently, saying it has created an ‘atmosphere of surveillance’ in the classroom that makes it harder for them to discuss controversial ideas.”

              Here is my reaction to all these lefties on campus. You don’t much like this, do you? This is a case of chickens coming home to roost.

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