The takeaway for those in the US: To detect nascent authoritarianism, look at who in particular is getting persecuted in academia. Another good heuristic: Look at who's over-serious and who is best wielding ridicule.
This article says nothing about persecution from the academic establishment to which you refer.
The article talks about academics being persecuted.
In Turkey the state took jobs and freedom of mobility away from those with ideologies that the regime did not favor.
Good point. To look for authoritarianism, look for powerful organizations and people taking away jobs and economic security from "those with ideologies the regime did not favor." It works for more types of organizations than just the state.
That's going to make those people desperate and ready to fight the government. Next step for the government is going to be imprisoning lots of people and manufacturing consent and all that.
That's another good heuristic. Look for those who manufacture consent, and try to suppress dissent.
I have seen that assertion frequently made, and even have attended multiple seminars on the topic (I have some friends very worried about this issue) as well as some FIRE meetings and fundraisers.
Yet I typically see the same few examples repeated and amplified. FIRE loves to talk about the cases it has challenged under Title IX -- and it always wins, because the law considers this an important issue! (https://www.thefire.org/issues/title-ix/)
Look at the recent (past couple of days) kerfuffle about Prof Wax, whose statements I consider abhorrent. Based on past practice I am pretty sure she'll keep her job.
There are issues around groups peripheral to universes (non-sponsored student groups and the like) but they pretty much by definition aren't part of universities.
1. There have been protests about conservative speakers at campuses and universities whom have pulled shady stuff on trying to prevent the speakers from coming. (there was a Dave Rubin one where he was magically moved from a theater to a hockey arena). Substantially high costs on security. (Also video cases of where the security isn't actually enforced [Milo at the Depaul thing.. ]
2. There have been punishments against professors who question the progressive/extreme-left movement. (losing tenure, being brought up that they're "violence-inciting", etc)
3. A Portland professor being brought up on disciplinary actions for doing a POC on how you can get a paper with outrageously false claims published without question. (https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2019/01/08/author-recent... This was a team of three that was involved one in the UK)
4. "Diversity offices" - I don't know direct examples here, but from what I've heard they've created trouble.
A few things:
- Protests are valid free speech expressions.
- Holding an entire protest as invalid due to a small number of individual's actions is unfair.
- Many of those conservative speakers aren't trying to spread discourse, but trying to create an outrage and play off of that (evidence exists of the malignant intent). While perhaps being protected by the 1st amendment, that's academic dishonesty. And we should not accept prima facie the arguments they're being oppressed.
- The portland professor was being brought up based on academic dishonesty, human experimentation, process, and ethics. We're going to need better evidence not to take the disciplinary board at face value.
Basically "I hear about this frequently" and "there have been..." is pretty weak evidence. It's mainly relying upon the recency bias, availability cascade, base rate neglect, and our inability to assess large events.
For example, the Berkeley campus protest is constantly referred to. The problem is this is a splashy example which distorts people's thinking. People rarely talk about the thousands and thousands of conservative speakers that hold events without a hitch. We cannot talk about a systematic risk by only referring to events that are so rare that we keep on referring to the same one for the last several years! That is _by definition_ the opposite of a systematic bias/risk.
Basically I call serious BS. Lack of data, cherrypicking stark examples, and the reuse of the same events over and over again while appealing to the impression that there should be more events like this, when there are not, is garbage.
Playing off of outrage is heavily rewarded by our current societal systems. It happens at all points of the political spectrum, but happens more at the extremes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc
The portland professor was being brought up based on academic dishonesty, human experimentation, process, and ethics
It's a hoax. It's a time honored means of expression, particularly when the subject heavily deserves ridicule.
Lack of data, cherrypicking stark examples, and the reuse of the same events over and over again
There's a list of well over 600 incidents of violence, vandalism, and threats, instigated by the far left. If you do some searching, you'll find over a hundred with just a bit of sincere effort, and in pretty short order. There's also the father and son republicans who were chased down by black block demonstrators. There's the time when a mob was calling for Tim Pool to be chased down and beaten. There's the Florida local news video crew attacked, his smartphone knocked out of his hand. The bike lock professor. That's all just off the top of my head. True, such things are also done by elements of the far right. All of it is bad.
In any case, it's certainly not the case that there are only a few cherry picked examples from the Far Left. There's an epidemic of political harassment and assault in 2019, and a majority of the incidents up to the level of vandalism and minor assault comes from the Left. If anything, there's a bias against talking about that in the media.
For what I meant by right-wing, I meant the popular definition that is used today: Anything right of extreme left.
> not today
Lol. Good luck with trying to suppress others based on their beliefs or opinions.
Winning often comes at a cost and just merely having to defend oneself causes enough damage to be considered a form of punishment regardless of the lack of an official classification as one.
While it isn't nearly the same level as losing your job and being blacklisted, I also don't think it should be counted as the same as someone who does not have to go through a similar process.
It's a good list. At the risk of courting Godwin I'd suggest that 'concentration camps' would be a good 15th point but I guess it's covered more generally.
[1] https://kottke.org/16/11/the-14-features-of-eternal-fascism
Fascism itself was also very modernist in many ways, such as the obsession with industry and technology, the aspiration to innovate "beyond" liberalism and Marxism, and even the artistic and architectural styles it adopted.
Another heuristic: Look out for people who would "argue" purely from resemblances. (And primarily by tarring.)
[citation needed]
I'm not out to marginalize academia in general. My wife is a former college professor, and a Stanford PhD. However, I would like to call out those in academia who would marginalize others in academia purely for their opinions. If anything, the threat to academic freedom is even more potent, when it comes from within.
It's not a lie. Liberals own academia. 39% of colleges have no Republican professors. In many majors, the ratio is between 15 and 20 to one Democrats per Republican.
There is no world where ratios like that exist and discrimination doesn't occur.