THE SPIRIT OF THE INQUISITION is alive and well in today’s cancel culture. The objective is not to root out nonbelievers in the church but ideological heretics in newsrooms and universities. These institutions are supposed to be bastions of free speech. But in 2020 any journalist or scholar who strays from progressive orthodoxy is ripe for cancellation.
Unlike Tyndale, no one is being burned at the stake, but plenty are being fired from their jobs. . .
. . . Take the forced resignation of New York Times editorial page editor James Bennet. Mr. Bennet’s crime was not having the “wrong” opinion but allowing someone else to express his—a U.S. senator who, in suggesting the use of federal troops to prevent violence amid protests, articulated a position with which the majority of Americans agreed, according to polls at the time.
The situation is even direr in academia. Consider the case of Nathaniel Hiers, a math professor at the University of North Texas who ran afoul of the powers that be when he criticized the concept of “microagressions,” a core tenet of the woke gospel. Mr. Hiers argued that the concept inevitably “hurts diversity and tolerance” by encouraging people to see the worst in others. For this blasphemy, he was fired.
Through such strong-arm tactics, newsrooms and universities silence opposition within their own ranks—and in the process expose their own ideological corruption. Americans are waking up to the realization that most media organizations are more interested in advancing their own agenda than reporting the facts. According to a recent Gallup poll, only 41% of adults trust the media to report the news “fully, accurately, and fairly,” and only 48% have confidence in higher education.
The press and the university are the institutions that are supposed to keep us tethered to an objective reality—to help identify truth and differentiate fact from fiction. By embracing political activism, many of these institutions have abandoned their teleological mission. Growing blurrier by the day is the line between news and propaganda, education and indoctrination. . . .
. . . .
We shouldn’t be afraid to pull the levers of federal and state power to bring about these reforms. For decades, American taxpayers have subsidized public universities, including some whose humanities and social-sciences departments look like political re-education camps. No more.
Legislators control the purse strings, and they can fight back by withholding funds from schools that enforce unconstitutional speech codes. They can go a step further in strengthening academic freedom by tying federal financial support to a university’s willingness to adopt some version of the Chicago Principles, which protect students and professors with divergent views.
Alumni and donors also play a role. They can push for change by targeting certain programs with their gifts and by using contractual requirements to demand a detailed accounting of how their money is being used. They can also make their contributions contingent on a university’s commitment to cultivating viewpoint diversity and upholding First Amendment freedoms.
Restoring intellectual honesty to our universities is key to rebuilding the credibility of the expert class and a semblance of a shared reality. We can debate the facts only when we can trust the institutions tasked to explain them. Until then, the political multiverse is here to stay.
(Orrin Hatch, "Higher Ed and the Fragmentation of America," The Wall Street Journal, July 27, 2020 (abridged, emphasis added))
Comments