Nicholas H. Wolfinger
Unsafe Science
Excerpt: “A new McCarthyism has descended on higher education”
If I had a dollar every time I read that phrase, I could afford to endow a chair in McCarthy studies. Centrists and conservatives used it a lot during the Great Awokening of the 2010s. Progressives got their turn after the October 7 Hamas attack. And, of course, the second Trump presidency and its assault on higher education has been manna for the McCarthyism-pronouncers. None of these folks are wrong, except perhaps for their reliance on a tired trope.
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Violating the First Amendment will cost you. Universities and other public institutions are learning this lesson the hard way as the dust settles on a series of lawsuits brought by university faculty and staff who were punished for their comments about Charlie Kirk’s murder last September.
If Johns Hopkins University wanted to signal its seriousness about creating an alternative to the left-leaning orthodoxy that permeates higher education, it couldn’t have done better than the recent hire of economist Peter Arcidiacono.
House Republicans have now formally backed President Donald Trump in fulfilling his campaign promise to dismantle the Department of Education, voting Wednesday to advance 10 bills that would codify the White House’s efforts to disperse numerous education programs and offices to other federal agencies.