How American Colleges Gave Birth to Cancel Culture | The Free Press

From a purely financial perspective, the higher education apparatus is among the wealthiest and most influential institutions in the world. But you wouldn t know that from the way many in academia try to position themselves. Colleges and universities are far from the humble academic hubs they claim to be, but many in higher education have a hard time admitting it s been a long while since they were the underdogs.

Academia s free speech skepticism is part of a long history of powerful people undercutting the First Amendment. Given that elites seldom like limitations on their power (and particularly on their power to censor), it shouldn t come as a surprise that the First Amendment was limited by judges and politicians from the very moment of its inception.

Although it was adopted in 1791, the First Amendment had very little actual legal force until 1925. The 1930s and 40s ushered in greater speech protections as the Supreme Court recognized freedoms of symbolic protest, petition, and freedom from state-compelled speech.

And, although the fifties brought McCarthyism, by the end of the decade freedom of speech enjoyed greater legal protection and cultural appreciation by the American people than ever before. From the late fifties through the sixties and into the seventies, historic victories for the civil rights, gay rights, and women s rights movements were all possible thanks in part to a robust interpretation of the First Amendment. In the words of civil rights icon John Lewis: Without freedom of speech, the civil rights movement would ve been a bird without wings.

But the stunning successes of these liberal social movements was not enough for one of the best-known philosophers in the world: Herbert Marcuse. Born in Germany, Marcuse fled in 1934 as the Nazis came to power, immigrating to the United States to teach first at Brandeis University and then the University of California at San Diego.

via www.thefp.com

Rikki Schlott and Greg Lukianoff.

San Diego! In the news! For offering an academic refuge to the guy who turned out to be one of the most dangerous communists in the world! Maybe not such a good thing, but they do love their communists at that huge, architecturally ugly, but famous-for-science university on the most spectacular real estate imaginable.