George Leef:

In the good old days of American education, professors could speak their minds freely. Disagreements would often result, with others disputing the case that the speaker had made. The solid consensus, however, was that academic freedom must never be curtailed, since intellectual progress depends on the exchange of ideas, just as John Stuart Mill had argued in On Liberty.

Perhaps the most disturbing trend in our colleges and universities today is the erosion of support for free speech. Professors who now take controversial positions have to worry about more than mere disagreement; they have to worry about punishment for having expressed “wrong” thoughts. A host of topics are now treated as sacred cows, where the official, establishment view may not be questioned. At the top of that list is “diversity.” Because of the intellectual fragility of the diversity obsession, its defenders usually respond to criticism not with reason but with punishments.

Because of the intellectual fragility of the diversity obsession, its defenders respond to criticism not with reason but with punishments.Norman Wang is a professor at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC), where he has been on the faculty since 2008, specializing in cardiology. His troubles at the school began in March 2020, after he published an article in the Journal of the American Heart Association (JAHA) entitled “Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity: Evolving Race and Ethnicity Considerations for the Cardiology Workforce in the U.S. from 1969 to 2019.” The article had been reviewed and accepted in the usual process.