Eric Kaufman: "The Threat To Academic Freedom: From Anecdotes To Data"

link.    The left has become a totalitarian cult. It's taken control of all our major institutions--including, it now seems, the military. It accomplished this by building its power in academia and using universities to spread its message, largely by indoctrinating the young and influential. It's managed this largely because the more moderate left has refused to condemn it. Kaufman's data suggests that the more moderate academic left--which is not actually very moderate--constitutes a plurality in the institution. It seems to confirm the view that the crazification of universities is led by a small group of radicals, and facilitated by a large group that's ambivalent and unwilling to oppose them. 

   Those who've said that this was all isolated to campuses turned out to be wrong. Among the many weird things about all this--it was obvious that they were wrong from the start. Now it is undeniable. How anyone could have actually believed it is beyond me. Basically that same group now says: political correctness will just spend itself and go away. But that, too, is false. PC has been around since the '80s. It made its assault on academia, won many victories, finally provoked a backlash. It lost some of its gains--e.g. illiberal prohibitions against free speech--but kept others. It was never really defeated, but just retreated into the faculty and para-faculty and administration. It did its foul work in the shadows until the time was right, whereupon it burst out, exploiting the influence it had been building behind the scenes for decades. Now it is, basically, the most overtly powerful religion in America. There's no reason to think PC will just spend itself and then go away. That's not what happened last time. It only stopped making gains when liberals stopped standing on the sidelines and opposed it. And it was never defeated, it just went into remission. 

   The country--and Western civilization--can only be saved by actively opposing PC illiberalism. It won't go away on its own, it must actively be pushed back, refuted, and destroyed. Stop pretending this will all work out just fine without you taking any risks nor lifting any fingers nor making any hard choices.