THAT PRESUPPOSES A PROFESSIONAL DISPOSITION.

Margaret "University Diaries" Soltan suggests that professors distinguish "extra credit" from "extortion."  "Through the long life of this blog, UD has read one account after another of some professor somewhere offering extra credit if the kids will help her husband distribute campaign literature (he’s running for school board!), or if they will show proof that they gave blood (blood donation is a virtue, and I want to encourage it!), or will show proof that they voted (it’s your civic duty!), etc., etc."

Yes, that would be desirable, provided the faculty understood their role as being able to teach the controversies and strengthen their students' jive detectors.

A half century of deconstructing those institutions and changing the mind-set leaves more than a few professors in the position of a Maoist re-educator, using every opportunity to set their charges on the One True Path.  By those lights, Earning an A for Political Effort On My Behalf is Serving The People.

Per corollary, calling attention to such efforts must be the work of Enemies of the People.  And outlets such as Campus Reform and College Fix?  Engaging in violence!

To their credit, senior scholars in the various trendy -studies departments have been asking the critics to concentrate their fire on the thought leaders.

However, those of us who are senior scholars doing critical work and authoring articles in this special issue are strongly committed to providing our support to critical scholars under attack by Trump-inspired rightwing individuals and groups, like Campus Reform and The College Fix. We know these attacks are only going to grow, and we know we cannot just be in a defensive mode. This issue represents our first efforts to start publishing on these issues, speaking up in public forums (e.g., conferences, speaking engagements) and organizing within our universities and national organizations. In other words, as senior scholars, we are pledging to actively support and protect critical scholars in colleges and universities across the US. Further, we challenge those rightwing organizations—instead of focusing on mostly untenured junior scholars, the most vulnerable among us—to focus your fervor on us.

Many of these authors are affiliated with the colleges of deaducation education.  That is already a target-rich environment, particularly as it is the graduates of the colleges of deaducation education who staff and run the common schools, and rare is the week I don't get to note the Distressed Material originating therein.

For the record, I've been linking to people who are skeptical of this "critical scholars" enterprise for the fifteen years of Cold Spring Shops, and raising such objections in curriculum committees and university governance for at least fifteen years before that.  Mr Trump is late to this enterprise, but if his activities bring my objections, and the objections of others, to national prominence, so be it.