Universities’ Stalinesque Procedures Are Silencing Unpopular Professors

James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal ^ | May 23, 2025 | George Leef

[karpov]

At one time, most Americans (and virtually all academics) would have agreed with the famous saying, often attributed to Voltaire, “While I disagree with what you say, I will defend to the death your right to say it.” Over the last several decades, that has dramatically changed. Many academics now seem to embrace the opposite view—something like, “Since I disagree with what you say, I will do everything possible to silence you.”

Is that an exaggeration? You won’t think so after reading Nicholas Wolfinger’s new book, Professors Speak Out: The Truth About Campus Investigations. Wolfinger, a sociology professor at the University of Utah, was the target of a vicious attack by people on campus who wanted to “cancel” him because they didn’t like his thinking. That spurred him to seek out other professors who have similarly suffered through groundless, one-sided investigations over trivial or nonexistent affronts to students, administrators, or outsiders with political pull.

During Stalin’s reign, his chief henchman, Lavrentiy Beria, had this saying: “Show me the man and I’ll find out the crime.” Under the vague Soviet criminal code, almost anything could be declared “anti-Soviet” activity, and since there was no such thing as an objective, independent judiciary, millions were sent to firing squads or the slave-labor camps of the Gulag simply because people with power wanted them gone. (Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago is filled with horrifying examples.)

American colleges and universities have become shockingly like that. It’s easy for any disaffected individual to lodge a complaint against a professor for a host of vague offenses, such as “discrimination,” “harassment,” or some other vaporous misdeed. The complaint then triggers procedures that are extremely one-sided, onerous, and potentially career-ending.

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TOPICS: Education
KEYWORDS: academia; college; dissent; education; freespeech

[hal ogen]

Universities are hotbeds of the stifling of freedom. This is because they are liberal cesspools.

[dfwgator]

More Maoist, than Stalinist.

[HYPOCRACY]

Almost every one is a mini soviet socialist state.

[blackdog]

If you don't like it, stop feeding off the federal teat while ruining the futures of millions of young adults woth inferior and defective product.

Sue my thoughtful Scribes and Squires. Sue them out of position to ruin another generation, both economically and philosophically.

[glorgau]

This article’s very existence is a micro-aggression.

[nopardons]

BTTT

[griswold3]

A friend says this reminds her of a certain “Cultural Revolution “