Free Republic

Sara Goldrick-Rab, a sociology professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, caused a firestorm last month when she publicly compared her governor, Republican Scott Walker, to Adolf Hitler in a tweet. She poured fuel on the flames by tweeting at incoming freshmen who were Walker supporters, encouraging them not to attend the school because of Walker’s education funding policies. Then, she apologized. Now she’s promoting a class she’s teaching this fall on “scholar activism.” The graduate seminar will “explore the biographies and narratives of a diverse array of scholar activists, examine the sociopolitical and economic forces shaping their work, and consider...

SENSITIVITY HAS TAKEN OVER OUR society, and nowhere more securely than in our universities. To see what has happened, consider this small fact. Half a century ago, a liberal Harvard psychologist, Gordon W. Allport, published a book, The Nature of Prejudice, that began the social science study of stereotypes. Though of course hostile to stereotypes, he allowed they might have a kernel of truth. For example, he said, fewer Jews are drunks than Irish. A remark like that could not be made at a university today except in private to trusted friends. And if you made it, you would be...