Meanwhile on the International front....

I'm tired of the "academic freedom" polemics about this.

Academic freedom can't exist in an overly controlled environment.

It also can't exist when there is anarchy.

It requires order. Just like any society where there is actual freedom never being characterized by anarchy. There need to be laws / rules that are designed to protect everyone's rights -- you are free to be a dick until your dick behavior involves stepping on other people's toes.

The irony of things like that Louis Menand piece (I find that guy's opinions on the wrong side of things an uncanny amount of the time) is that it does nothing to acknowledge that that ship had sailed in the OTHER direction a long time ago with the (wrongheaded) ideological groupthink that was forced on people within those institutions using bully tactics from within (not a bunch of bloviating politicians on the outside who haven't done anything yet, at least, to codify anything that impinges on academic freedom despite all the hand wringing).

What you are actually seeing is a little bit of pushback on what had been ACTUAL threats to academic freedom that have rotted those schools and created the problems they are now having in the first place (they created a monster and the monster got even more monstrous).

I won't say the tide is turning on the DEI nonsense, but I saw this yesterday (no idea if it is true, of course they are not making a public announcement):

 

I can't get the link to work. ... But that Fareed Zakaria on CNN had two professors from Dartmouth on this morning, one is Israeli-American, the other is a former Egyptian dilomat / academic, and they teach a course together on the Israel-Palestinian conflict. This was the beginning of what the Israeli-American had to say about the demonstrations. ...

The norms are for debate, not for coercion. And what Ezzedine and I tried to do was model what that kind of debate would look like. I believe that if you are going to set up an encampment on the green at Dartmouth -- which is really not just some marginal place, it is really the main thoroughfare of the campus where they are planning commencement -- and if you set up an encampment on the green, you are basically saying, ‘I believe in a conception of justice that is so fundamental to me, that I am going to coerce you to accept it or you’re not going to be able to have something that is valuable to you. That is not debate. That is coercion. And institutions that teach coercion, prepare you to maybe be a commissar or a priest, but not to be a citizen of the united states.