THE TENURE TRACK IS A SCREEN FOR PUSILLANIMITY.

In principle, academic tenure exists as a safeguard for people to play with ideas.  "In other words, if you want academics to engage in quality thinking, they have to be allowed to think out loud without fear of being fired if they say something that makes someone angry."  On the other hand, it might be a poisoned chalice for the protection of cowardly careerists.  "Ask yourself whether academic freedom and tenure are for Lernfreiheit, or for craven cowardice."  Used to be, the group-thinkers didn't want to be tainted with free market notions.  These days, that seem like a minor fear: now the risk is coming off as a segregationist or something.  The hammer fell on Elisa Parrett, recently tenured in English at the Lake Washington Institute of Technology, for the crime of ... talking back in a struggle session.

Parrett went on to complain about the segregated setting of the training and what she saw as the generally closed-minded nature of the nation's post-Floyd discourse. "Democracy thrives on conversations, but what we are seeing happening right now in the United States is not a conversation," she read. "It is a coup. Everyday Americans of all colors, creeds, backgrounds, and beliefs are being held hostage. Zealots are telling us, 'You're either with us or against us, and if you're against us, you're an evil bigot.' They are telling us, 'You're either part of the solution, or you're part of the problem.' They are telling us that all people may be classified into two sides: us or them, Democrat or Republican, liberal or conservative, people of color or white, righteous or bigoted, oppressed or privileged. I don't accept such false dichotomies, and I don't accept the ad hominem implications that come with it. Too often, words like 'privileged,' 'defensive,' and 'fragile' are just ways to dismiss what another person has to say. Too often, words like 'racist' are just a way to intimidate someone into silence." Parrett argued that people should work together to solve "real problems like wealth disparity, poverty, job insecurity, unemployment, the high cost of living, or the fracturing of the nuclear family, whatever form that family takes," but are waylaid by those who claim the "real problems" are "racism, sexism, transphobia…[and] hateful words."

Predictably, the careerists are manifesting themselves. "The group seemed unhappy Parrett had injected such a skeptical and defiant note into the proceedings—a fair amount of cross-talk and accusation ensued—though she says a number of other colleagues thanked her (mostly privately) for speaking up."  After an inquiry of Kafkaesque dimensions, the professor's docket includes a letter of reprimand.  The institute itself, just one more hothouse.

In parts of academia and media, it appears to be increasingly common for left-leaning people to make inflated claims of harm when they are exposed within their community to opinions that might rate as blandly center-right or even center-left in a broader context. In other words, the victims of these inquisitions are often accused of having perpetrated a level of harm that would strike a reasonable observer as a profound exaggeration of what occurred.

Parrett's case is drenched in harm claims. According to the LWTech administration, hundreds of her colleagues were rendered so distraught by her words they couldn't even do their jobs. She also needed to be punished, according to [vice president for instruction Suzanne] Ames, for the harm she could commit against a hypothetical student from a marginalized background.

In progressive communities threatened by illiberalism, this hysterical style of accusation is now commonplace.

The accusations also serve to shield people from precisely the sorts of ideas they'd most benefit from being able to engage in an intelligent manner.  Our universities, from Brown to Lake Washington, are being run by terminally stupid people.