Sweet is absolutely correct, and the response to him is another warning sign of the growing ideological intolerance in the American academy that drastically lowers its intellectual level. Together with a cringeworthy article yesterday about the dismissal of an adjunct for showing a picture in an art studies class, it tells you all you need to know about the reasons why politicians try to reshape  the academic discourse. I don’t justify the laws against “divisive teachings” but something needs to be done. Why should history be used as a political weapon on the left instead of being a factual account of the past that can be accessed by all sides in the public arena? Why should it be part of a “racial justice” crusade? What IS racial justice, and who decides? Without an open debate, are we to assume than anything claimed by a Black historian is true by virtue of their skin color, and anything claimed by a white historian is false? Unless the American academy goes back to the founding principles of openness, freedom of speech, and informed debate, it will be co-opted by the right or the left, and I, for one, on the side of the right simply because history shows that left censorship is far more ruthless, comprehensive and dangerous than its right-wing equivalent. But of course, to know that you need to know the actual facts instead a slanted ideological narrative.

Sweet is absolutely correct, and the response to him is another warning sign of the growing ideological intolerance in the American academy that drastically lowers its intellectual level. Together with a cringeworthy article yesterday about the dismissal of an adjunct for showing a picture in an art studies class, it tells you all you need to know about the reasons why politicians try to reshape  the academic discourse. I don’t justify the laws against “divisive teachings” but something needs to be done. Why should history be used as a political weapon on the left instead of being a factual account of the past that can be accessed by all sides in the public arena? Why should it be part of a “racial justice” crusade? What IS racial justice, and who decides? Without an open debate, are we to assume than anything claimed by a Black historian is true by virtue of their skin color, and anything claimed by a white historian is false? Unless the American academy goes back to the founding principles of openness, freedom of speech, and informed debate, it will be co-opted by the right or the left, and I, for one, on the side of the right simply because history shows that left censorship is far more ruthless, comprehensive and dangerous than its right-wing equivalent. But of course, to know that you need to know the actual facts instead a slanted ideological narrative.

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