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)