As Candace notes, “professors are not beyond reproach,” though the Ad Hoc Committee to Defend the University and its numerous signatories appear to think otherwise. The Committee’s petition is a predictable follow-on to the AAUP’s recent “Freedom in the Classroom” statement, where the assumption seems to be that “academic freedom” means academics need not answer to anyone but themselves.

However, as ACTA senior fellow Erin O’Connor , the Committee’s often hysterical rhetoric is amenable to analysis, and tells us a lot about what is motivating those who espouse it. The fact that so many academics continue to refuse to respond to reasonable calls for accountability underscores the depth of the problem and the urgent need to expose their self-serving arguments.