Those untroubled by woke attacks on campus speech and free inquiry like to insist that there really isn’t a problem, that the issue is nothing more than fake news drummed up by the right-wing echo chamber. Well, the invaluable Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) this week issued a new report that exposes the cynicism of the “nothing to see here” crowd.

The number of professors, graduate students, and
instructors subject to formal complaints shot up fourfold between 2015 and 2020
and the number subjected to petitions increased more than tenfold over that
same stretch. There were just 24 total incidents in 2015, but 113 in 2020 (when
many campuses were remote) and 61 in just the first half of 2021. Of the 426
attacks FIRE documents over the five-year period, three-quarters have resulted
in a sanction of the scholar — with a quarter of them resulting in scholars
losing their job.

While campus administrators don’t appear to be initiating more actions, a deeply troubling trend is the explosion of such efforts launched by undergraduate students. Report co-author Komi German told Inside Higher Education that it isn’t clear whether more students are seeking to “punish” scholars for thought crimes or whether those inclined to do so are newly “emboldened,” but, either way, “It’s a huge red flag for those concerned about students’ tolerance of dissenting views.”

In no great surprise, the targets
were most often scholars of law, political science, English, history, and
philosophy. As the report notes, these are the fields that are at the very
heart of a liberal arts education and where faculty have the responsibility to
“routinely discuss and debate what it means to live in a free and open
society.” That means the chilling effect of each single incident could
potentially be enormous, as faculty in these fields seek to steer away from
contested waters.

The problem is not solely one of runaway wokeism.
Nearly two-thirds of the attacks came from the scholar’s left, but 34 percent
came from his or her right. In short, the anti-Enlightenment left is leading
the charge on campus speech suppression, but it has too much company.

What is one to make of all this? I see at least three
takeaways.

First, we need to be vigilant, keep raising the alarm,
and push back at every opportunity. This is where FIRE has proven so immensely
valuable over time.

Second, campus bureaucrats don’t appear to be directly
responsible for this surge, but they certainly bear responsibility for enabling
and appeasing it. As co-author Sean Stevens aptly put it, “Behavior that gets rewarded gets repeated. If
administrators keep caving in to demands to punish faculty for their
expression, the demands will continue to increase.”

Third, while half the incidents involved teaching or research, perhaps half were triggered not by classroom discussion or scholarly work but by social media interactions. While I’m not especially concerned with the ability of professors to pen outrageous tweets about Donald Trump or Elizabeth Warren, the notion of undergrads tracking faculty tweets to flag wrongthink is frighteningly reminiscent of life in Moscow, Beijing, or Pyongyang — and is a stark reminder of the stakes for American higher education.

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