The article discusses the unprecedented assault on higher education in the United States, describing it as a more severe threat than McCarthyism. It draws parallels between past and present efforts, highlighting how both originate from right-wing movements aiming to reverse progressive reforms. However, today's attacks are broader, involving federal power and targeting various aspects of university life, including curricula and faculty decisions. The piece emphasizes the role of economic sanctions and complicit academic leaders in these efforts, positioning them as attempts to control the educational landscape.
Wolfson was wrong. What's happening now is far worse. The current wave of threats and attacks could actually—and is intended to—wipe out the American system of liberal higher education as we know it.
In order to divert attention from their presumably unpalatable goals, those forces started a crusade against an inflated and demonized enemy which they offered to eradicate.
The first is that, unlike McCarthyism, which focused only on the past political activities of individual professors, the current onslaught... touches almost every aspect of higher education.
Both repressive movements emerged from the efforts of powerful right-wing forces to roll back the progressive social and economic reforms of an earlier era.
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