Is the increase in the number of firings and cancellation attempts of professors now compared to McCarthyism actually a result of modern cancel culture being worse, or is it just because of an increase in the number of professors? I would be interested to see the per capita numbers.
This is all in the article, but is worth repeating.
One in six professors say they have either been punished or investigated for punishment, which extrapolates to more than 100,000 professors. This means the number we have for fired professors is almost certainly wildly low. Yes, higher education is larger than it was in the late 1950s, but not nearly enough to account for that difference.
The reason why having a larger absolute number of firings—two or three times greater than those during McCarthyism, which were directed specifically at communists—matters is because that number should be essentially zero. During McCarthyism, it was not yet clear that the First Amendment prevented colleges from firing people based on their political viewpoints. After 1957, and increasingly through 1973, it became very clear that the First Amendment did protect against this.
This is why, in the backlash after 9/11, only about three professors were fired—and all three had actually done things that, under the law, could justify termination.
The House Un-American Activities Committee was created in the late 1930's and had nothing to do with the atomic bomb obviously. One of the first things it did was go after New York public universities for housing faculty with both Communist and non-Communist progressive and liberal viewpoints. A couple of years later due to the work of the Rapp-Coutert Committee, 50 faculty and staff at CCNY were axed or quit, and one was jailed for perjury. That is one college system alone in one year. Atlanta University fired WEB Dubois in 1943 for similar reasons. A large number of sociologists were investigated by the FBI before McCarthy as well. These and probably other examples had nothing to do with "rational fear of the atomic bomb." I understand you want to use the reference of the red scare, but ignoring the similar purges that lacked this motivation seems misleading to me.
"...many federal workers were victims of a purge targeting gay men and lesbians. The rationale was that it would be easy to blackmail closeted gay men and women and therefore they were vulnerable..."
I wonder howe may Washington bureaucrats are closet Trump supporters, and hope nobody finds out. Lord knows, there's been a purge. In reality, DEI is that purge.
Would cancel culture be "defensible" in some regards in the same sense that "McCarthyism" was? Just like Soviet espionage was a thing, despite drastic improvements in the treatment of women and minorities, the remnants of sexism and racism are still around. This, of course, is extensible to other, less worthy targets of cancel culture; I'm not trying to "motte-and-bailey" this by picking two easily-defensible causes, except for purpose of illustration. Although one could argue that McCarthyism was based on the motte-and-bailey fallacy itself.
Of course, it's not an excuse for cancel culture any more than it was for McCarthyism, with "reds under beds" and similar paranoias and witch-hunting. But it might explain why and how the extremisms developed.
The dwindling tolerance and prevalence of racism, sexism, etc. opened up two "catalysts" for cancel culture:
1) Somewhat paradoxically, people tend to become less tolerant of societal problems as they become less common. The urge seems to be a desire to stamp out what's left versus keeping marginal problems in perspective in light of the increasingly costly measures that would be required to fully eradicate them.
2) As "bad" beliefs become less common and espoused by fewer people, it becomes easier to marginalize/shun/exclude ("cancel") that smaller group. The smaller group has fewer defenders and more people attacking them.
Is the increase in the number of firings and cancellation attempts of professors now compared to McCarthyism actually a result of modern cancel culture being worse, or is it just because of an increase in the number of professors? I would be interested to see the per capita numbers.
This is all in the article, but is worth repeating.
One in six professors say they have either been punished or investigated for punishment, which extrapolates to more than 100,000 professors. This means the number we have for fired professors is almost certainly wildly low. Yes, higher education is larger than it was in the late 1950s, but not nearly enough to account for that difference.
The reason why having a larger absolute number of firings—two or three times greater than those during McCarthyism, which were directed specifically at communists—matters is because that number should be essentially zero. During McCarthyism, it was not yet clear that the First Amendment prevented colleges from firing people based on their political viewpoints. After 1957, and increasingly through 1973, it became very clear that the First Amendment did protect against this.
This is why, in the backlash after 9/11, only about three professors were fired—and all three had actually done things that, under the law, could justify termination.
The number of firings in each period, normalized to the size of academia at the time, is in the article? What are the numbers?
Thanks, came here to suggest the same thing.
The House Un-American Activities Committee was created in the late 1930's and had nothing to do with the atomic bomb obviously. One of the first things it did was go after New York public universities for housing faculty with both Communist and non-Communist progressive and liberal viewpoints. A couple of years later due to the work of the Rapp-Coutert Committee, 50 faculty and staff at CCNY were axed or quit, and one was jailed for perjury. That is one college system alone in one year. Atlanta University fired WEB Dubois in 1943 for similar reasons. A large number of sociologists were investigated by the FBI before McCarthy as well. These and probably other examples had nothing to do with "rational fear of the atomic bomb." I understand you want to use the reference of the red scare, but ignoring the similar purges that lacked this motivation seems misleading to me.
"...many federal workers were victims of a purge targeting gay men and lesbians. The rationale was that it would be easy to blackmail closeted gay men and women and therefore they were vulnerable..."
I wonder howe may Washington bureaucrats are closet Trump supporters, and hope nobody finds out. Lord knows, there's been a purge. In reality, DEI is that purge.
Would cancel culture be "defensible" in some regards in the same sense that "McCarthyism" was? Just like Soviet espionage was a thing, despite drastic improvements in the treatment of women and minorities, the remnants of sexism and racism are still around. This, of course, is extensible to other, less worthy targets of cancel culture; I'm not trying to "motte-and-bailey" this by picking two easily-defensible causes, except for purpose of illustration. Although one could argue that McCarthyism was based on the motte-and-bailey fallacy itself.
Of course, it's not an excuse for cancel culture any more than it was for McCarthyism, with "reds under beds" and similar paranoias and witch-hunting. But it might explain why and how the extremisms developed.
The dwindling tolerance and prevalence of racism, sexism, etc. opened up two "catalysts" for cancel culture:
1) Somewhat paradoxically, people tend to become less tolerant of societal problems as they become less common. The urge seems to be a desire to stamp out what's left versus keeping marginal problems in perspective in light of the increasingly costly measures that would be required to fully eradicate them.
2) As "bad" beliefs become less common and espoused by fewer people, it becomes easier to marginalize/shun/exclude ("cancel") that smaller group. The smaller group has fewer defenders and more people attacking them.