Amero Media, Adobe Stock Images 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.
Wolfinger has sought out professors who have suffered through groundless, one-sided investigations over trivial or nonexistent affronts to students. 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.)
It’s easy for any disaffected individual to lodge a complaint against a professor for a host of vague offenses. 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. As Wolfinger states, “An army of digital soldiers now stands ready to target faculty members,” and university officials usually take their side.
In the book’s 18 chapters, we have cases of left-leaning professors in the crosshairs of conservatives and of right-leaning professors under attack from “progressives.” The common thread is that people who didn’t like them were able to abuse the system to hound and damage them, purely for vengeance.
The cases are all worth reading, and I will summarize just a few of them.
Consider the plight of philosophy professor Robert Frodeman, tenured at the University of North Texas. He criticized his university’s hiring policy, which favored women, and argued that it was illegal to hold workshops that were open only to women. For voicing his opposition to such policies, Frodeman was hit with an anonymous complaint alleging “sexual harassment.” Instead of brushing it off as retaliation against him for failing to side with the feminist agenda, the university hired a biased law firm to investigate him, dredging up other complaints going back a dozen years. During this time, Frodeman was ordered to stay off campus and speak to no one about the case.
The official in charge of the case had an animus against Frodeman and pushed for the maximum penalty (termination), despite the university’s written policy allowing 12 less-severe levels of sanctions. After the torment of the university’s star-chamber proceedings, Frodeman finally resigned. The intolerant feminists got their way, and the school lost a good philosophy professor.
Professor Buddy Ullman had been teaching at the Oregon Health & Science University for 32 years and had won numerous teaching awards. All of that went up in smoke following a Title IX complaint against him from a female student who had done poorly in his course, a required one for students wanting to pursue medical school. Her complaint led to school officials coming up with other grievances requiring “investigation.” In these procedures, Ullman (typically) never had an opportunity to contest the charges or confront his accusers. He was playing against a stacked deck. He observes, “Not only had the investigator functioned as the prosecutor through the inquiry, but she also served as the judge, jury, and executioner.” Ullman could have taken his case into an actual court of law—and quite a few judges have rebuked universities for their denial of due process to the accused—but he was exhausted after fighting and quit.
Two of the book’s cases come from Canada, where the system is every bit as bad as it is in the U.S.
In a move reminiscent of Cultural Revolution “struggle sessions,” Widdowson was told she had to “show remorse” for her transgressions. One involves Frances Widdowson, an economics professor at Mount Royal University. She is a passionate believer in equality and freedom and thought that she could exercise her free-speech rights to criticize her university’s “Indigenization Initiative.” She expressed doubt about the university’s belief that there are “other ways of knowing,” meaning that native peoples have some non-scientific means of discerning truth that are not available to others. Moreover, she wrote a satirical reply to a woke university statement. She then learned that academic freedom does not shield a professor who mocks the sacred cows of “progressivism.” The intolerant elements at her school attacked her as a “racist” and demanded that she undergo “antiracist training.” The university’s one-sided investigation concluded that she was guilty of “harassment” because she had denigrated the beliefs of favored categories of people. In a move reminiscent of the “struggle sessions” during China’s Cultural Revolution, she was told that she had to “show remorse” for her transgressions. She didn’t and was fired.
When women’s studies advocates heard about Kambhampati, they accused him of being “a threat to their well-being.” The other Canadian case is equally revealing. Professor Patanjali Kambhampati teaches chemistry at McGill University. He landed in hot water when he dared to debate the merits of preferences for women and minorities on social media. When women’s studies advocates heard about that, they accused him of being “a threat to their well-being.” Professor Kambhampati thought he was free to express his views. He writes, “I compared women’s/gender studies to the academic racism of the Progressive Era, and considered what feminism/genderism had in common with racism and communism. That proved to be the linchpin of the attempts to cancel me.” McGill’s dean of diversity eagerly pitched into the battle against the terrible heretic in the chemistry department. So did the dean of science. Kambhampati endured five years of investigation and hostile procedures but was able to survive.
Sociology professor Lee Jussim and his graduate assistant Nathan Honeycutt ran into a different kind of opposition—from the Institutional Review Board (IRB) of Rutgers University. They had worked up a survey on aspects of the intellectual climate on campus and were astounded to find that the IRB blocked them. The function of an IRB is to ensure that research is carried out ethically. But what could possibly be unethical about merely asking questions of people? Jussim and Honeycutt eventually realized that the IRB’s stance was not a good-faith effort at upholding ethical standards. Instead, it was motivated by the fact that some Rutgers “progressives” did not want any such surveying to be done, since it might reflect badly on them.
Several of the cases in the book have been discussed in Martin Center articles: Dennis Gouws, Dave Porter, Elizabeth Weiss, Nicholas Wolfinger himself, and Stephen Porter.
This book shows beyond any doubt that we suffer from an intolerance problem in our academic institutions. It has become absurdly easy for students, faculty members, or administrators to launch investigations of professors just because they hold unfashionable opinions. If college officials cared about academic freedom, they would not tolerate the star-chamber procedures the book’s contributors delineate. Unfortunately, their commitment to free speech is often only skin deep and depends on who is speaking. The best outcome for this book would be if legislators and board members demanded that college leaders put an end to this.
George Leef is director of external relations at the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal.
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George Leef
