The anti-free speech movement in the United States was largely an outgrowth of higher education where viewpoint intolerance has taken hold of many schools. Indeed, intolerance and orthodoxy are often defended on the left in the name of tolerance and pluralism. Harvard Professor Timothy McCarthy is one of those voices demanding the removal of faculty with opposing views in the name of tolerance. He recently told New York University’s Washington Square News that any faculty who do not support “gender-affirming care” should be stripped of their academic titles and fired.
Many academics and citizens oppose “gender-affirming” policies on religious or other grounds. Some believe that school-enforced policies inhibit debate over gender dysphoria and the basis for various treatments and protections on both sides. McCarthy believes that no such debate should be allowed among faculty, declaring that “there’s a particular place in hell for academics who use their academic expertise and power to distort and do violence to people in the world.” He was targeting two professors at NYU who are affiliated with groups critical of surgical and chemical interventions for gender dysphoria.
Professor McCarthy offered the usual nod to free speech and academic freedom before eviscerating both in his comments. He admitted that “a level of suspicion and inquiry into medical practices is healthy,” but then dismissed such views as harmful and mere efforts to “poison the waters.”
There was a time when such intolerance was directed against the left and groups ranging from feminists to those in the LGBT community. Now, it has become a badge of honor, the expected bona fides that show the correctness and firmness of one’s views.
The irony is crushing. Harvard’s Kennedy School website states that McCarthy “was the first openly gay faculty member” at the public policy school “and still teaches the school’s only course on LGBTQ matters.” When I first went into teaching, I had friends who still remained in the closet out of fear that their sexual orientation would undermine their chances for tenure or advancement. Likewise, far-left academics associated with the critical legal studies (CLS) movement were viewed as “poisoning the waters” of higher education and often blocked from teaching.
The left has now adopted the same intolerance and orthodoxy once used against it. Indeed, it has been far more successful in purging the faculty ranks of conservatives, libertarians, and dissenters. As we have previously discussed, Harvard is particularly notorious for this purging of both its faculty and student body.
This year, Harvard again found itself dead last among 251 universities and colleges in the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) annual ranking.
The Harvard Crimson has documented how the school’s departments have virtually eliminated Republicans. In one study of multiple departments last year, they found that more than 75 percent of the faculty self-identified as “liberal” or “very liberal.”
Only 5 percent identified as “conservative,” and only 0.4% as “very conservative.”
According to Gallup, the U.S. population is roughly equally divided among conservatives (36%), moderates (35%), and liberals (26%).
So, Harvard has three times the number of liberals as the nation at large, and less than three percent identify as “conservative” rather than 35 percent nationally.
According to the last student survey, only 9 percent of the class identified as conservative or very conservative.
Notably, despite Harvard’s maintenance of an overwhelmingly liberal faculty and student body, even liberal students feel stifled at Harvard. Only 41 percent of liberal students reported being comfortable discussing controversial topics, and only 25 percent of moderates and 17 percent of conservatives felt comfortable in doing so.
Among law school faculty who donated more than $200 to a political party, 91 percent of the Harvard faculty gave to Democrats.
Professor McCarthy appears right at home in his public call for a further purging of faculty ranks.
This is an area that has deeply divided the country, as was evident in the last election. Higher education should play a critical role in that debate by allowing faculty and students to engage with each other in civil and substantive debate. Instead of spending so much time and effort trying to silence those with opposing views, the left could instead focus on refuting these claims. Instead, it is replicating that same pattern of cancellations, deplatformings and firings that marked the last decade. It is the same approach used against academics who questioned aspects of COVID policies including mask efficacy doubts, natural immunity theories, opposition to the closing of schools, opposition to the six-foot rule, and the lab theory on the virus’s origin. They were also removed from faculties and associations. Yet, many of these views have since been vindicated.
What was lost was not just free speech and academic freedom, but a rigorous debate that might have helped us avoid some of the costs of unsupported COVID policies. For example, some of our closest allies listened to skeptics on the need to close schools and opted to keep young children in school. They were able to avoid the massive educational and psychological costs that we incurred in this country. Much like Professor McCarthy, these skeptics were accused of “poisoning the waters” and spreading harmful ideas or disinformation.
There is no difference between the intolerance of figures like Professor McCarthy from those who once sought the same measures against liberals, homosexuals, or feminists. Now firmly in control of higher education, many on the left are using their power to win public debate through retribution, coercion, and attrition. In the process, they are destroying the very essense of higher education for not just our students but ourselves.
Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro professor of public interest law at George Washington University and the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.”
Although Harvard is a bastion of all things leftist, I agree. All biological males and females should receive all medical care for their given birth gender. I assume this is what the good professor means. I’m XY and certainly do not want the level of care of a the single chromosome jack jumper ant. That’s what he means, right?
I don’t remember ever feeling the need to discuss my sexual proclivities with anyone while I was in school, so I’m always suspicious of these people that need to “out” themselves. Many of the people who feel the need to declare their sexual predilections are, I always fear, people are desperately attention seeking. Even though the topic causes screams of outrage on the left, many “transgender”, etc., people are people who have been convinced that displaying odd sexual preferences is a suitable cry for the attention they seek. If we could weed out the attention-seekers from the people with real problems, I think we’d find out that we have far fewer sexual oddballs than we think we do. And of the oddballs (I use that word deliberately) we have, why do academic administrators feel such a strong need to put those oddballs into teaching positions?
Mike,
Great comment. Someone tells me their are gay, I say, “Okay.” And move on. What two consenting adults do in their bedroom is none of my business, the church’s business or the governments business. Now, if they were sexually abusing their adopted children like those two sickos who got caught, tried and convicted for child abuse, that is a different story.
“there’s a particular place in hell for academics who use their academic expertise and power to distort and do violence to people in the world.”
Prof. McCarthy lacks the self-awareness to realize he’s describing his own future residence.
OLLY,
I had a similar thought.
The transwomen I know transitioned in their 50s, after marrying wonen and raising children. They could make an informed choice.
A hard-hitting column and so obviously correct that only blind Progressives — as any religious cult — can’t see it.
This is now a raw power struggle. You don’t win these contests of ideas and wills through thoughtful analysis alone. Sure, we need the Thomas Paine’s, Sam Adams’s, and Thomas Jefferson’s of our day (I’d include you in this contemporary group), but we also need the Robert Morris’s, Haym Salomon’s, and John Hancock’s — will Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Marc Andreessen pour substantial amounts of their wealth into court actions (which will hopefully suffice rather than armed rebellion)? If not, we will not succeed in returning this country to one that functions as though each person is equally valuable independent of any category to which they can be assigned, that merit is the only basis for economic and political transactions, and that allows “freedom of association” except where physical violence or fraud are involved. Good luck with all that!
From this commentary I have drawn two conclusions.
1. Harvard hires inferior thinkers to teach at their university.
2. Harvard’s reputation as an “elite” university reflects the power of propaganda to override truth.
Time is no longer on Anybody’s side,
We won’t be able to settle these things, We are running out.
Let It Be
According to Gallup, the U.S. population is roughly equally divided among conservatives (36%), moderates (35%), and liberals (26%).
Professor Turley; remember back in the Stone Age in the 1970’s/early 80’s, when the word “liberals” didn’t mean communists and neo-communist socialists? Back when we didn’t use “migrants” instead of Illegal Aliens?
What could possibly be offensive about fascist communism/Marxism if you call it “liberal”? What could be offensive about millions of Illegal Alien criminals in the country if they’re merely “migrants” – like migrating geese, they’ll eventually continue their journey to somewhere else!
Remember George Orwell in his book 1984? “The Revolution will be complete when the language is perfect.”
Professor Turley and so many others have willingly bent the knee, subjugating themselves and their First Amendment rights to Newspeak, well on the way to the Soviet Democrat goal of making other modes of thought and speech impossible.
Faculty have an absolute right to free speech, whether progressively liberal, or conservative, speech. What university and faculty do not have is an absolute right to federal taxpayer-funded stipends or grants.
Vincente,
And their endowments taxed. After all, they are selling something.
Professor Timothy McCarthy seems to own the position of tolerance in support of intolerance. Or is it intolerance in support of tolerance? Either way, the good professor has generated his own personal paradox, at best a logical fallacy. Some academics are truly sloppy, even clerical, in their use of argument.
Dear Mr. Turley, for many years the Left has barked at the Right by claiming the Right “doesn’t follow the science”. I would like to see the Right begin saying this to the left. Regarding the differences between men and women, this has been known since the Creation.
We are well aware that academia has become the cloistered repository for the new Inquisition of faith. Just like Torquemada, Mr. Kennedy is the leader of his band of inquisitors to see if you are adhering to the faith of lgbtq???. You can either adopt the faith or you can be punished in several ways, but the faith must be preserved. Again, I iterate that these cultists have the same ardor of any islamic jihadist whose faith demands absolute adherence. I am not doubting the sincerity of Mr. Kennedy’s faith in his cause, it just that he is wrong in thinking that his eccentricity should become the ethos of the land anymore than the world must convert to islam in order to achieve their world wide caliphate. It just doesn’t work that way and we have been dealing with religious proselytizing on this globe for ever and all it does is create tensions, war and death in many instances. And believe me, the lgbtq??? agenda is a religious cult because you must suspend reality in order to believe it in.
Bottom line up front Prof Dummkopf McCarthy, body dysphoria is a mental illness. I do not believe that normal people should participate in a mentally ill person’s delusions. You can if you want to, but I choose not to. And believe it or not, you don’t get to be the decider of what I believe or say. You’ll just have to get over it. My sister was a paranoid schizophrenic who believed all kinds of things were happening to her, they weren’t. And our family did not give into her delusions other than to have her institutionalized when things got really bad. Biology – maybe you should take a class in it Prof Dummkopf and you’ll find that humans are either male (XY chromosomes) or female (XX chromosome) and once in a very great while nature doesn’t get it exactly right and there can be hermaphrodites, but transgenderism is mental disease. I think that maybe you’re the one who needs to be fired for being a dummkopf at Harvard.
Prof. Turley, there are a huge numbers of college professors in the U.S. On any given day, one of them says or does something crazy. You don’t have to write a column every time this happens. How about writing about genuine problems, such as the Trump Administration’s attempts to strip government contracts from Perkins Coie? If you did so, you would be performing a service to the public and to the Constitution.
Contracts are granted, not a right. They were violating their side of the contract, the other party has every right to kill it based on verbage of said contracts.
Why do we keep having to explain this stuff every single time to you simpletons?
Perkins Coie and it’s principles wouldn’t even still be in business if the DoJ and FBI had prosecuted them instead of protected them for the felonies the principles of that company committed while attempting to help Obama and Clinton rig the 2016 election.
We’re supposed to forget what they were caught doing during that election.
Any particular reason you believe that a law firm that was instrumental in multiple felonies in the attempt to rig the 2016 election for three Democrat politicians and the Democrat party should be allowed to bid on government contracts after being caught committing those felonies?
Isn’t that the Perkins Coie that illegally laundered money from Clinton and Obama to pay two foreign spies illegally hired to write the “Trump-Russia Dossier” to be used in Hillary Clinton’s campaign? And to be used by the FBI as a false document to obtain illegal FISA courts, as Obama sent both his last two Attorney Generals and FBI Directors to perjure themselves to the courts that it was 100% verified under the mandatory Woods Procedures and evidence Trump was conspiring with Putin?
The exact same Perkins Coie who then misdescribed the illegal money laundering scheme to illegally pay those foreign spies by claiming in the firm’s tax returns that it was money received from Clinton and Obama for “legal services”, rather than illegal campaign payments?
The Perkins Coie who escaped with a mere fine from the FEC, while Marc Elias got a pass for their felonies, but the other lawyer involved in the felonies, Michael Sussmann was indicted?
Do you have a different Perkins Coie in mind than the Perkins Coie that figured so prominently in the 2016 election?
McCarthy seems to be following in the footsteps of his infamous “cousin”, Tail Gunner Joe.
”He who knows nothing is nearer to truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors. …”
Thomas Jefferson Letter to John Norvell June 11, 1807
The difference being; Tail Gunner Joe was correct and was shut down by the very communists he was exposing. This crackpot academic is a delusional member of a pernicious cult attempting to force his religion on all of us.
This is more of the famous leftist love and tolerance we keep hearing about.
antonio
I wonder what gay Prof McCarthy thinks about those who see “Gender affirming care” as a war on gays, as the vast majority of adolescents who are confused about gender grow out of it, and a great many wind up homosexual.
And these intolerant dumbasses still consider themselves to be intellectuals. Faculties are very effective in undermining and destroying their own status and prestige.
Havard is an Elite School for Woke/Left Wing Radicals/Socialist etc. Ivy League of Wokeness.
Harvard is trash.