I loved this essay. Nothing bothers me more than teachers being censored for speaking their minds. I went to college in the 90s and never for a moment felt the need to question my professors. Sure I had questions and maybe didn’t agree with what they had to say. I was there to learn. And take what I learned and decide if it’s what I believed in and supported. Sometimes I did and sometimes I didn’t. I loved debate. I could never imagine making a teacher apologize to me for content taught in class. Things are so different today. I’m sorry for what you teachers are dealing with.
My husband and I were just discussing our 17 year old applying to colleges for next year. We just want her to have a full college experience, to have teachers who are not afraid to speak their mind, guide their students to think for themselves and not follow woke ideas. But just real life stuff. Are there any schools out there like this anymore?
Here's another way to do it, where you can search by school and see the free speech rankings and also see how many incidents of "cancel culture" and other zany stuff the school has:
Perhaps you got lucky! It does appear that Temple is relatively good (which is not to say very good or even great) on speech issues. It has a yellow rating (instead of green or red) from FIRE:
But surely you've heard of some of the numerous other cases at other institutions that I link to in the part of the article where I write, "I could go on. And on. And on"?
It reminds me of the difference between Authoritarianism and Totalitarianism. Hitler was a totalitarian, he wanted to control every aspect of your life. If you told a joke in a bar about Hitler, the SS would pay you a visit. Maybe not to put you in a concentration camp (the first time), but at least to warn you that this wasn't tolerated. Mussolini was authoritarian. You could tell jokes about Mussolini. But if you were a member of an opposition party, or a newspaper opinion writer, watch out! Trump is going to usher in an authoritarian government. But the Left wing on Campus wants to control the way you think and express yourself at all times.
I also agree with Sam Harris. He said its possible to have diabetes AND Cancer. Trump is cancer. This cancel culture is diabetes. But Sam Harris also said that if you want to see just how unhinged the Left wing can get, give Trump 4 more years.
One thing you have failed to highlight the people braver than yourself who did speak up about intellectual suppression at universities sometimes at great personal cost.
As I endeavor to make clear in the post, I was speaking about my own experience, not writing a holistic history of this period. There was no one at my college who spoke out.
Thank you for sharing your experiences. I’m not certain where we go from here as the dynamic you describe has brainwashed at least two generations but I am grateful that you are still present in academia where change is essential. Good luck!
“The fact that the abuses perpetrated by American leftists against their freedom-loving fellow citizens over the last few years were not acts of a totalitarian government.”
No, they’ve only been loudly calling for the Government to assume that role, and to judicially weaken and to dispose of free-speech rules up to and including killing the First Amendment.
What is a state college or university’s enforcement of the woke codes except the State fascistically endorsing and enforcing Authoritarian repression?
Greetings from a fellow lefty horrified by the contemporary authoritarian left! I fear my comment comes too late to be noticed, but so be it: I felt I ought to show my support. I quit both my university posts (one in the UK, one in California) in 2021 as a matter of principle, but I am mindful that since I had a thriving consultancy business I had a luxury to act on my principles.
I greatly appreciated your remarks here, which are timely, and I am sad that you have had to endure such additional abuse for coming out and speaking sincerely. Sad but hardly surprised. The left has been driven mad, and I teeter on the brink of despair for any recovery of its once firmly held principles, even if I hold out hope against hope for a turning point.
While I certainly agree that no individual fascist leader is required, you do not mention at any point the blossoming of censorship under the blue team's now-ending administration. Is this in part because you trace the trend back further, spanning a period that includes a red team presidency, and therefore presume it has no role? I feel this would be a mistake. The left authoritarians were encouraged and emboldened by control of what was permissible to say on social media, and this for me is a key part of the story of how the left lost its principles.
If you haven't looked into this at all, a good point of entry might be David Samuels' "Rapid-Onset Political Enlightenment" in Tablet:
I don't agree with everything Samuels says here, but he does a good job tracing the key concept of 'permission structures'.
And where do we go from here? Firstly, the problem has to be recognised. From the hostile reception you have received here, we still have a fair way to go on this front, but I thank you for stepping forward and speaking because it would have been far easier to say nothing. Secondly, we need to rebuild a set of shared principles in at least some portion of the left or, equivalently and alternatively, between the left and the right to secure some kind of citizen democracy, and not the ideological mirror world 'democracy' that has been championed in recent years in Germany, the UK, the US and elsewhere.
This latter task (securing principles) is the philosophical project I'm attempting at Stranger Worlds here on Substack, and I am struck that while I am successfully engaging with both left and right, everyone on the left involved appears to be over fifty years of age (and many still presume that the left today is much as it was in their youth). The absence of sound principles in the young left seems to me an urgent problem in need of a solution.
On this, here's one of my 'Letters to America' from December 2024 entitled "When the Blue Team Wins Again":
It's only a 3-minute read, as are all the pieces at Stranger Worlds, but I feel this offers a refreshing antidote to the entrenched partisanship of the US political teams and all their terrible presidents.
I hope you will get to read these remarks, and I thank you for writing your account. I greatly appreciated you coming forth to bear witness.
I have witnessed or personally experienced most everything you describe here, but what disappoints me the most is the cowardice of those who refuse to oppose this insanity, especially tenured faculty. We have been at an inflection point for some time now, where to remain silent or to actively oppose the inane policies of the progressive left is to put oneself at risk. The difference is that active opposition at least gives us a chance to move the conversation in a new direction. However much I wish it would have happened otherwise, Trump's victory cleared the path and opened the door for conversation. Will that conversation now take place? Doubtful. This element of the progressive left is digging in and going underground. This is nowhere truer than in higher education. This is only the beginning.
Thank you for this passionately written article. It’s heartbreaking what you and so many others have been through and continue to experience. Thankfully I’m long retired so my livelihood hasn’t been at stake, but I know I’ve alienated close friends, family and even my children because I just can’t keep my mouth shut all the time.
You may have read this quote already, but I’ll share it anyway.
The surest way to work up a crusade in favor of some good cause is to promise people they will have a chance of maltreating someone. To be able to destroy with good conscience, to be able to behave badly and call your bad behavior 'righteous indignation' — this is the height of psychological luxury, the most delicious of moral treats - Aldous Huxley
People say this time has now passed, but in my circles it hasn’t.
I retired in 2012 from a federal government agency and certainly dodged some bullets. I’m not sure I could have survived DEI training. I’m not prepared to call someone out for not doing what I might not have done myself. Self-preservation is not cowardice; we are most of us not the heroes we would like to think we would be.
In response to this honest, well-written piece about an important subject, I will quibble with semantics.
We need to nail down the definition of "fascist". Granted, the vast majority of the instances of that word in this essay are in the context of a statement that the events described were not perpetrated by a fascist leader, but it is implied (and explicitly stated in a quote) that if it had been an individual behind them, that individual would have been fascist.
I don't think totalitarian thought policing is the hallmark of fascism. It is often (always?) a feature of it, but not the defining feature. I understand the historical definition to involve: 1) a totalitarian ruler who demands personal loyalty, 2) use of ethno-nationalism to mobilize support for the leader, and 3) use of large, private (in the sense of not-state-owned) corporations as principle instruments of state power.
The incoming Trump administration checks all these boxes. The first Trump administration notably did not meet the third criterion. The Putin regime is fascist. The Kim regime is not.
Despite the Nazi example, fascism is not necessarily worse than other totalitarian formulations. It's just a particular flavor, and it's useful to have the word so we can refer to the system of "racist dictator + corporate oligarchy" as distinct from, say, the "classist party oligarchy + command economy" that defines communism.
The ideological mob rule this piece describes is frighteningly common now, yet somehow we don't have a broadly-accepted word for it. We need one. It's not fascism.
There is great old BBC documentary titled Nazis: A Warning from History. Episode 2 is Chaos and Consent. Most records were burned at the end of the Second World War in Germany, but one rare instance of a police archive escaped the fires.
The records contradict a generally held view about Nazi Germany. It was not a police state in the standard sense. Neither the Gestapo or the German police had the manpower to affect a totalising control over the population, stifling dissent. Instead, Nazi fascism relied almost entirely on the presence of informants within every community to obtain the consent of the German people. In this environment it is easy to see how almost all public dissent was quickly stifled.
My point would be this- although the Nazi regime had a totalising power over the State, its Laws and its institutions, its true power resided elsewhere- in a particular mechanism of social tyranny empowered by legions of willing informants. The Nazis and their regime received their authority and true power from a small percentage of willing and eager Judases within the population.
When evaluating fascism we need to distinguish trappings from the true source of authority and genuine power to instruct consensus and complicity- a small percentage of individuals extraneous to the state exercising coercive control over everyone else, frightening them into silence, and obedience to dogma- the willing accomplices of history.
Last time I checked, the series was still available on YouTube.
Described in the essay. The small group of informants were able to keep everyone in line. But only because they had the tacit consent of the powerful, who saw the potential for their own power in letting the kids run wild.
“When evaluating fascism we need to distinguish trappings from the true source of authority and genuine power to instruct consensus and complicity- a small percentage of individuals extraneous to the state exercising coercive control over everyone else, frightening them into silence, and obedience to dogma- the willing accomplices of history.”
Yep, Nassim Nicholas Taleb called it the Dictatorship of the Small Minority- he really should have used the word ‘tiny’. Often cancel culture aimed at getting people fired is driven by less than a handful of ringleaders and a couple of dozen minions, terrified of the narcissistic bullies in charge.
Good Lord….
I loved this essay. Nothing bothers me more than teachers being censored for speaking their minds. I went to college in the 90s and never for a moment felt the need to question my professors. Sure I had questions and maybe didn’t agree with what they had to say. I was there to learn. And take what I learned and decide if it’s what I believed in and supported. Sometimes I did and sometimes I didn’t. I loved debate. I could never imagine making a teacher apologize to me for content taught in class. Things are so different today. I’m sorry for what you teachers are dealing with.
My husband and I were just discussing our 17 year old applying to colleges for next year. We just want her to have a full college experience, to have teachers who are not afraid to speak their mind, guide their students to think for themselves and not follow woke ideas. But just real life stuff. Are there any schools out there like this anymore?
University of Austin is the most obvious candidate:
https://www.uaustin.org/
I'd also search FIRE's "college free speech rankings":
https://www.thefire.org/research-learn/2025-college-free-speech-rankings
Here's another way to do it, where you can search by school and see the free speech rankings and also see how many incidents of "cancel culture" and other zany stuff the school has:
https://www.thefire.org/colleges
I've taught politics at Temple University for 25 years and this has not been my experience.
Perhaps you got lucky! It does appear that Temple is relatively good (which is not to say very good or even great) on speech issues. It has a yellow rating (instead of green or red) from FIRE:
https://www.thefire.org/colleges/temple-university
And there have only been about 6 recorded attempts to suppress speech there in recent years:
https://www.thefire.org/colleges/temple-university/cases
But surely you've heard of some of the numerous other cases at other institutions that I link to in the part of the article where I write, "I could go on. And on. And on"?
I've taught politics at Temple University for 25 years and this has not been my experience.
It reminds me of the difference between Authoritarianism and Totalitarianism. Hitler was a totalitarian, he wanted to control every aspect of your life. If you told a joke in a bar about Hitler, the SS would pay you a visit. Maybe not to put you in a concentration camp (the first time), but at least to warn you that this wasn't tolerated. Mussolini was authoritarian. You could tell jokes about Mussolini. But if you were a member of an opposition party, or a newspaper opinion writer, watch out! Trump is going to usher in an authoritarian government. But the Left wing on Campus wants to control the way you think and express yourself at all times.
I also agree with Sam Harris. He said its possible to have diabetes AND Cancer. Trump is cancer. This cancel culture is diabetes. But Sam Harris also said that if you want to see just how unhinged the Left wing can get, give Trump 4 more years.
Also, we get to see how unhinged Harris can get. He is America's foremost TDS sufferer, after all.
One thing you have failed to highlight the people braver than yourself who did speak up about intellectual suppression at universities sometimes at great personal cost.
As I endeavor to make clear in the post, I was speaking about my own experience, not writing a holistic history of this period. There was no one at my college who spoke out.
Thank you for sharing your experiences. I’m not certain where we go from here as the dynamic you describe has brainwashed at least two generations but I am grateful that you are still present in academia where change is essential. Good luck!
“The fact that the abuses perpetrated by American leftists against their freedom-loving fellow citizens over the last few years were not acts of a totalitarian government.”
No, they’ve only been loudly calling for the Government to assume that role, and to judicially weaken and to dispose of free-speech rules up to and including killing the First Amendment.
What is a state college or university’s enforcement of the woke codes except the State fascistically endorsing and enforcing Authoritarian repression?
Dear Jake,
Greetings from a fellow lefty horrified by the contemporary authoritarian left! I fear my comment comes too late to be noticed, but so be it: I felt I ought to show my support. I quit both my university posts (one in the UK, one in California) in 2021 as a matter of principle, but I am mindful that since I had a thriving consultancy business I had a luxury to act on my principles.
I greatly appreciated your remarks here, which are timely, and I am sad that you have had to endure such additional abuse for coming out and speaking sincerely. Sad but hardly surprised. The left has been driven mad, and I teeter on the brink of despair for any recovery of its once firmly held principles, even if I hold out hope against hope for a turning point.
While I certainly agree that no individual fascist leader is required, you do not mention at any point the blossoming of censorship under the blue team's now-ending administration. Is this in part because you trace the trend back further, spanning a period that includes a red team presidency, and therefore presume it has no role? I feel this would be a mistake. The left authoritarians were encouraged and emboldened by control of what was permissible to say on social media, and this for me is a key part of the story of how the left lost its principles.
If you haven't looked into this at all, a good point of entry might be David Samuels' "Rapid-Onset Political Enlightenment" in Tablet:
https://www.tabletmag.com/feature/rapid-onset-political-enlightenment
I don't agree with everything Samuels says here, but he does a good job tracing the key concept of 'permission structures'.
And where do we go from here? Firstly, the problem has to be recognised. From the hostile reception you have received here, we still have a fair way to go on this front, but I thank you for stepping forward and speaking because it would have been far easier to say nothing. Secondly, we need to rebuild a set of shared principles in at least some portion of the left or, equivalently and alternatively, between the left and the right to secure some kind of citizen democracy, and not the ideological mirror world 'democracy' that has been championed in recent years in Germany, the UK, the US and elsewhere.
This latter task (securing principles) is the philosophical project I'm attempting at Stranger Worlds here on Substack, and I am struck that while I am successfully engaging with both left and right, everyone on the left involved appears to be over fifty years of age (and many still presume that the left today is much as it was in their youth). The absence of sound principles in the young left seems to me an urgent problem in need of a solution.
On this, here's one of my 'Letters to America' from December 2024 entitled "When the Blue Team Wins Again":
https://strangerworlds.substack.com/p/when-the-blue-team-wins-again
It's only a 3-minute read, as are all the pieces at Stranger Worlds, but I feel this offers a refreshing antidote to the entrenched partisanship of the US political teams and all their terrible presidents.
I hope you will get to read these remarks, and I thank you for writing your account. I greatly appreciated you coming forth to bear witness.
With unlimited love,
Chris.
wow… that was cool. thank you.
You just took me to church. All I can say is “amen my brothers and sisters”. What I wouldn’t give to make this required reading in many places.
Bravo, thank you for having the courage to write this. (I would just, gently, insert that Fascism is much more a feature of the left than the right.)
YES
I have witnessed or personally experienced most everything you describe here, but what disappoints me the most is the cowardice of those who refuse to oppose this insanity, especially tenured faculty. We have been at an inflection point for some time now, where to remain silent or to actively oppose the inane policies of the progressive left is to put oneself at risk. The difference is that active opposition at least gives us a chance to move the conversation in a new direction. However much I wish it would have happened otherwise, Trump's victory cleared the path and opened the door for conversation. Will that conversation now take place? Doubtful. This element of the progressive left is digging in and going underground. This is nowhere truer than in higher education. This is only the beginning.
Thank you for this passionately written article. It’s heartbreaking what you and so many others have been through and continue to experience. Thankfully I’m long retired so my livelihood hasn’t been at stake, but I know I’ve alienated close friends, family and even my children because I just can’t keep my mouth shut all the time.
You may have read this quote already, but I’ll share it anyway.
The surest way to work up a crusade in favor of some good cause is to promise people they will have a chance of maltreating someone. To be able to destroy with good conscience, to be able to behave badly and call your bad behavior 'righteous indignation' — this is the height of psychological luxury, the most delicious of moral treats - Aldous Huxley
People say this time has now passed, but in my circles it hasn’t.
I retired in 2012 from a federal government agency and certainly dodged some bullets. I’m not sure I could have survived DEI training. I’m not prepared to call someone out for not doing what I might not have done myself. Self-preservation is not cowardice; we are most of us not the heroes we would like to think we would be.
No, I agree. Most of us are just trying to survive and keep food on the table. Congratulations on surviving your job.
In response to this honest, well-written piece about an important subject, I will quibble with semantics.
We need to nail down the definition of "fascist". Granted, the vast majority of the instances of that word in this essay are in the context of a statement that the events described were not perpetrated by a fascist leader, but it is implied (and explicitly stated in a quote) that if it had been an individual behind them, that individual would have been fascist.
I don't think totalitarian thought policing is the hallmark of fascism. It is often (always?) a feature of it, but not the defining feature. I understand the historical definition to involve: 1) a totalitarian ruler who demands personal loyalty, 2) use of ethno-nationalism to mobilize support for the leader, and 3) use of large, private (in the sense of not-state-owned) corporations as principle instruments of state power.
The incoming Trump administration checks all these boxes. The first Trump administration notably did not meet the third criterion. The Putin regime is fascist. The Kim regime is not.
Despite the Nazi example, fascism is not necessarily worse than other totalitarian formulations. It's just a particular flavor, and it's useful to have the word so we can refer to the system of "racist dictator + corporate oligarchy" as distinct from, say, the "classist party oligarchy + command economy" that defines communism.
The ideological mob rule this piece describes is frighteningly common now, yet somehow we don't have a broadly-accepted word for it. We need one. It's not fascism.
There is great old BBC documentary titled Nazis: A Warning from History. Episode 2 is Chaos and Consent. Most records were burned at the end of the Second World War in Germany, but one rare instance of a police archive escaped the fires.
The records contradict a generally held view about Nazi Germany. It was not a police state in the standard sense. Neither the Gestapo or the German police had the manpower to affect a totalising control over the population, stifling dissent. Instead, Nazi fascism relied almost entirely on the presence of informants within every community to obtain the consent of the German people. In this environment it is easy to see how almost all public dissent was quickly stifled.
My point would be this- although the Nazi regime had a totalising power over the State, its Laws and its institutions, its true power resided elsewhere- in a particular mechanism of social tyranny empowered by legions of willing informants. The Nazis and their regime received their authority and true power from a small percentage of willing and eager Judases within the population.
When evaluating fascism we need to distinguish trappings from the true source of authority and genuine power to instruct consensus and complicity- a small percentage of individuals extraneous to the state exercising coercive control over everyone else, frightening them into silence, and obedience to dogma- the willing accomplices of history.
Last time I checked, the series was still available on YouTube.
Described in the essay. The small group of informants were able to keep everyone in line. But only because they had the tacit consent of the powerful, who saw the potential for their own power in letting the kids run wild.
“When evaluating fascism we need to distinguish trappings from the true source of authority and genuine power to instruct consensus and complicity- a small percentage of individuals extraneous to the state exercising coercive control over everyone else, frightening them into silence, and obedience to dogma- the willing accomplices of history.”
Sounds like cancel culture.
Yep, Nassim Nicholas Taleb called it the Dictatorship of the Small Minority- he really should have used the word ‘tiny’. Often cancel culture aimed at getting people fired is driven by less than a handful of ringleaders and a couple of dozen minions, terrified of the narcissistic bullies in charge.