Time for academia to get out of politics

Even the left and right agree now!

I almost wrote this post a few months ago, and I can’t even remember what prompted it back then. Maybe it was the continued pro-abortion propaganda being pushed on university campuses - messages written as though everyone on campus was pro-abortion and thankful for pro-abortion legislation and other activism with no possiblity of the existence of pro-life faculty, staff, and/or students on campus. But I never got around to the post.

But suddenly, the world is being rocked by 3 high profile university presidents finding it difficult to protect Jewish members of their campus from hate speech and physical threats… and it seems that academia’s obsession with certain political views has finally dug them a grave too deep. You know that’s true when CNN, a liberal network, is sharing a few like this one by Fareed Zakaria:

I’ve actually been wondering when the shit was going to hit the fan on this issue. I have many colleagues in academia that are Jewish. They are good scientists and respectable people. And to see some campuses (not mine) allow hate speech and physical threats an entire people group is horrific. So I’m happy to see CNN’s anchor take a stance on this and hope that more academics consider his thoughts. It’s only a 6 minute video, I recommend it - it is quite objective. The only point that I would add is that Jewish individuals are not the only people group that are marginalized by so-called “Diversity, equity, and inclusion” movements - so are Christians….

…Which brings me to my original motivation months ago. I wrote a post on this some time ago basically initiating a point I made above. I took some time to see if any of my favorite substackers had ever written on this same point, and it seems that Dr. Vinay Prasad wrote a thoughtful post on this some time ago also. Interesting aspect of Dr. Prasad’s story is that it is from even further back in time. So this is not new.

In short, this is rather ironic. Academia ostracized, persecuted, and penalized faculty that took stances during the COVID-19 pandemic that were against The Narrative. Suddenly, for some people, politics is coming to roost where it shouldn’t. Except this time it is actually personal and political and not a simple issue of scientific perspective. So yes, academia should get out of politics… but perhaps it is too little, too late, especially given the insight shared by Fareed Zakaria.