It has long been evident that “progressives” have a huge streak of intolerance for disagreement. In recent years, they have become astoundingly open about that, particularly in the academic world. Students or faculty members who speak up to dissent from leftist orthodoxy are apt to find themselves facing the lash.
Here is a particularly revealing incident. As Robert Zimmerman writes on his blog, Professor Elisa Parrett of the Lake Washington Institute of Technology, has been excoriated by the school’s president because she dared to oppose segregated racial “training.” Academic freedom and open debate are evidently concepts unknown to the Institute’s president, Amy Morrison.
Zimmerman nails the truth: “Of course, freedom of speech is impossible under such circumstances. If according to the authorities your comments might offend someone somewhere and therefore must be silenced, the authorities have just given themselves the power to silence all opinions they don’t like, arbitrarily. And that is exactly what we have now on college campuses and corporate offices nationwide: an illiberal oppression based on mindless hate and the desire to control everything with the misuse of power.”
It’s time for a ferocious counterattack by the people responsible for running our educational institutions, and paying for them. Intolerant authoritarian officials like Morrison need to be shown the door and replaced by people who, whatever their politics might be, uphold the basic norms of the academia.
H/t: Sarah Hoyt