Welcome Back, McCarthyism

If you’re a normal person leading a normal life, you welcome the police in your community (as Kent has noted) and have a high regard for their integrity.  If, however, you’re an academic, particularly at a prestigious place like Yale, Stanford, Harvard or Berkeley, you view police as a racist menace with power that needs to be curtailed if not ended completely.  What’s worse, in a way, is that if you have a minority view on campus  —  if your thinking about police Does Not Conform To The Standard  —  you are the object of derision or worse.  Prof. Jonathan Turley takes note of the sad and ominous state of diversity of thought in academia:

First, it is increasingly rare for any conservative or libertarian to be hired on a faculty, particularly a highly ranking school like Berkeley…In my thirty years of teaching, I have never seen the level of open intolerance for opposing views on faculties as I have seen in the last few years. I have spoken with young law professors across the country who say that they feel that they cannot speak openly to colleagues about such issues because they fear they will be fired or punished by their liberal colleagues. Indeed, many faculty are now quite clear in forcing colleagues either support or stay silent on such issues.

Jonathan’s full piece is here.