By
George Leef
Tuesday,
June 20, 2023
With
increasing frequency, we read stories about the antics of the academic Left on
our campuses — how they attack people who disagree with them with a viciousness
that can be jaw-dropping.
In today’s Wall Street Journal, we have such a story. Ann
Atkinson, who used to be the executive director of the T. W. Lewis Center for
Personal Development at Arizona State, writes about the way faculty
“progressives” responded when she organized an event on campus with three
non-progressive speakers. The event was not political, with the topic being
aligned with the objectives of the Lewis Center, namely “Health, Wealth, and
Happiness.”
But the
fact that the event had nothing to do with any current controversies didn’t
matter. The speakers were denounced as “purveyors of hate” and
“white-nationalist provocateurs.” That’s standard zealot language used against
anyone who disagrees with the leftist agenda for the nation.
Students
told Ms. Atkinson that they were intimidated into not attending and others said
they would attend only if cameras never faced the audience. We are deep into
Big Brother territory when college students fear to be seen at the “wrong”
events.
In the
end, the faculty radicals and woke administrators got their vengeance — Arizona
State canceled the Lewis Center and terminated Ms. Atkinson.
Keep
this in mind the next time you hear from a defender of our universities that
the faculty may be politically engaged but are too professional to let it
influence their teaching. That’s baloney. Most of them are cut from the same
cloth as Mao’s Red Guards.
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