University Professors Against Academic Freedom

Does academic freedom have a greater enemy than the American Association of University Professors?

With millions of dollars in backing from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the AAUP recently set up a Center for the Defense of Academic Freedom (CDAF) that’s about as accurately named as the Ministry of Truth in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four.

Instead of defending academic freedom, the director of the AAUP’s center wants to stamp out some of the last vestiges of viewpoint diversity on today’s campuses.

In the face of overwhelming hostility from hiring committees—and often outright, illegal discrimination—conservative academics and even old-fashioned liberals have been forced to find positions outside of regular departments in new “civics centers” on campuses across the country, places like the University of Florida’s Hamilton School for Classical and Civic Education.

Even a tenured Harvard professor at the top of his field, like the Renaissance historian James Hankins, has found the progressive-dominated academic mainstream of today so intolerant he’s moved to the Hamilton School, where his students will be judged on their merit as scholars, not the color of their skin or their politics.