Thread by @TheTattooedProf

TFW you read an otherwise good review essay about higher education but then run into this trope (from someone who ought to know better, frankly). thenation.com/article/societ…

If I see one more purportedly elite academic both-sides this thing...not being permitted to make rape jokes to female students is not similar to state suppression of curricular material. "People are being illiberal on both sides" is a fucking cop-out and you should be ashamed.

This is the highfalutin academics' equivalent of "but what about anti-white racism?" or "why don't you ever talk about black on black crime?" You're giving oxygen to absurdities, and flattening out power asymmetries to the point of malicious dishonesty.

That Harvard letter, Delbanco's both-sidesing the existential threat from the Right, equating it to students calling out white profs without the proper dollop of decorum...it's all of a piece. There is a community of "elite" academics who care about their club and nothing else.

Meanwhile, tenure is almost extinct, academe has become a gig economy, Right-wing legislators are emulating Nazi legislation from the 1930s...and they're given cover by "liberal" profs and pundits who think the real crime is woke undergrads not bowing and scraping enough.

I mean, my state is about to make it illegal to teach Black history, but please do go on about how your colleague can't possibly be a creeper and serial predator simply by virtue of the fact he's your colleague and both of you won fancy book prizes. No damage done, there. :/

Fellow white faculty: minoritized students demanding that you stop saying racist things to them is not "speech codes." Getting criticized publicly is not the same thing as censorship. You're just experiencing the actual consequences of your words for the first time. Suck it up.

So if you're an ivy-league or elite SLAC tenured white prof, and your examples of "real threats to academic freedom" are students finding their own voices and speaking back to power, and not the literal Nazi revival, please think about how you got to this sad and stupid place.

Me when I read "at my own institution (Columbia University)" in an overview of issues in higher education:

(with apologies to friends and colleagues doing the work and acting in good faith at said institutions).