It looks like that from inside the US too. At least, to a lot of us.
I’ll add, the perverse incentives of publish or perish is also responsible for an aimless and irresponsible churn that lead us into the reproducibility crisis. So really the ship has been falling apart in every regard for a very long time. Not it’s just impossible to ignore. Not to mention, the obvious cost and waste of the institutions and life ending debt… it’s just all a mess
Where you’re right is that the rights attach is, well, that… an attack. The cruelty IS the point.
The progressives are just bumbling do gooders who push things too far. But this is kind of treating them with kiddie gloves. Again, look at the major international story today.
The right is trying to tear something down that they see as broken.
Both parties are, as usual, culpable and ignorant of their own contributions to the degradation. They are both childish in their own way, and both willing to put themselves and their beliefs before the mission of academia, which of course, if not about “you” (them)