Woke American academia is catching China’s virus of forbidding all criticism
Fortunately, several other professors from the law school are fighting back on Smith s behalf. In a letter to the dean, they wrote that an academic institution committed to free inquiry cannot allow misplaced accusations of bigotry to become an all-purpose tool for silencing critical comment. They complain that the words and tone of the dean s letter create the impression that judgment has been rendered in advance and the outcome of the promised review has been predetermined to find Smith guilty.
This sort of response from Smith s colleagues ought to become commonplace anywhere and everywhere academic freedom is threatened by whiny students and lickspittle administrators. Still, honorably dissenting faculty carry only so much weight. Unless the administrators feel the heat, they will surely continue to bow to the mobs.
What is needed is for university boards of directors, whether public or private, to put administrators on notice that any interference with academic liberty, especially without full and fair due process, will not be tolerated. Indeed, boards should tell administrators that they risk their own jobs if they side against academic freedom.
Now that should wake up those administrators. As the saying goes, sometimes the only way to get an official s attention is to break a little china.