In this Martin Center article, Jay Schalin suggests where to draw the lines and looks at some cases.

He writes, “With such considerations in mind, the following guidelines should form the foundation of a definition, or at least a starting point for a discussion on the matter. The boundaries of a lack of fitness should include:

  • Making wild conjectures as facts without supporting evidence. This can include a refusal to use proper methods, or deliberately using known falsehoods.
  • Unwarranted maliciousness towards individuals, groups of people, and the nation. This includes support for unconscionable actions, such as genocide and pedophilia.
  • Promoting or inciting violence against innocents. It is one thing to make a reasoned argument why a nation should go to war; it is another to urge the murder or abuse of non-combatants.”

In 2016, a professor at Drexel University put out a tweet in which he declared, “All I want for Christmas is white genocide.” (This wasn’t an isolated instance; he had in the past written that violence against white people was quite acceptable.) Drexel defended him on academic freedom grounds, but the prof later decamped for Vassar. Should Drexel have tolerated that? Schalin thinks not.

In 2017, a professor at Portland State, Bruce Gilley, published an article in which he argued that colonialism had some benefits for the colonized people. A great many students and professors demanded that Gilley be fired and that his article be taken down. They got their way on the article, but Portland State didn’t fire Gilley. In that, the university made the right decision in Schalin’s view.

He concludes that, “There are many wild theories being bandied about in academia today that suggest their proponents should find other employment, such as critical race theory and “indigenous science” that equates fantastical native myths to proven science. And there are disturbed, radicalized individuals who have found an audience in an Ivory Tower that does not subject their ideas to proper scrutiny. Using the concept of fitness that is well-defined and well-reasoned could go a long way toward providing a means to keep an open dialogue of ideas and, at the same time, rid higher education of those who are not worthy of the rights of a scholar.”