The Rot Inside Higher Education Is Too Deep to Self-Correct

“Under the Trump Administration, America is descending into the long night of fascism.”

That is the mantra of professors around the country who condemn the administration’s efforts in higher education to reverse the recent explosion of anti-Semitism, to ensure the presentation of multiple viewpoints, and to end programs that violate the Supreme Court decision in 2023 prohibiting racial discrimination in student admissions.

To professors such as Louise Williams, president of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) faculty union at the four regional campuses of the Connecticut State University system, these efforts are a violation of academic freedom and freedom of speech. In her view, they threaten nothing less than professors’ freedom to tell their students “what the evidence says is the truth and to teach the truth.” The result, she says, is an atmosphere in which “everyone is scared.”

Apart from the fact that in many academic disciplines, what is true remains a matter of debate on which reasonable people may disagree, freedom of speech and academic freedom are not the same thing.