A very interesting essay, excerpt below:
… “The obvious thing is this: the title of today’s presentation,”Recent Attacks on Academic Freedom: What’s Going On?”can be answered in a single sentence. Academic freedom is under attack for pretty much the same reasons that liberalism itself is under attack. American campuses tend to be somewhat left of center of the American mainstream, particularly with regard to cultural issues that have to do with gender roles and sexuality: the combination of a largely liberal, secular professoriat and a generally under-25 student body tends to give you a local population that, by and large, does not see gay marriage as a serious threat to the Republic. And after 9/11:again, for obvious reasons:many forms of mainstream liberalism have been denounced as anti-American. There is, as you know, a cottage industry of popular right-wing books in which liberalism is equated with treason (that would be Ann Coulter), with mental disorders (Michael Savage), and with fascism (Jonah Goldberg). Coulter’s book also mounts a vigorous defense of Joe McCarthy, and Michelle Malkin has written a book defending the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War Two. In that kind of climate, it should come as no surprise that we would be seeing attacks on one of the few remaining institutions in American life that is often:though not completely:dominated by liberals.” …
NB: For a limited time you can watch and listen to Berube present this essay here.
