Rufo Makes Them Nervous

 

With his online weekly (7-14-2023) report that genius Christopher Rufo sends me, and to which I subscribe, he reports that Florida’s tenured radicals are reporting that his reporting on them is making them nervous, and his response, is Good.

 

My response: they seem to be whining that he is a right-wing authoritarian force that will force them to lose their free speech rights, and perhaps their jobs. That of course is balderdash, but he does count-argue effectively. 

 

Rufo: “My recent reporting on radical DEI programming in state universities, which helped pave the way for the abolition of those programs by Florida governor Ron DeSantis, has apparently made left-wing academics in Florida’s public universities nervous. . . . professor Robert Cassanello told the Tampa Bay Times that his colleagues are terrified of being exposed publicly. . . . The following day, I received an email from a producer at NPR . . .”

 

My response: these Leftists and their media allies are accusing Rufo of endangering their careers with his public criticism. They promoted radical DEI agenda items. Including racist ideas like whiteness is a pathological narcissism. This propaganda is being fed to young minds.

 

Rufo is unapologetic: “The FSU professors seem to want it both ways. They encourage students to pursue left-wing radicalism but wilt at the slightest criticism of their instruction—which, it should be pointed out, is subsidized by the Florida taxpayers and, as such, is part of the public domain. . . . There are two issues at play here, one farcical, the other far-reaching. First, this situation exposed the utter fraud of academic radicals. On campus, they praise one another for their heroic resistance. But they are not the revolutionaries that they imagine themselves to be; they are taxpayers funded agents of the state, backed by the prestige of the university and a massive administrative bureaucracy. Yet, when pressed into public debate—that is, into politics—they immediately cry foul and take refuge in a therapeutic posture. “

 

My response: Rufo is not censoring them, blacklisting them, or canceling them, but, as public employees, they are pushing an anti-American radical agenda to credulous young people, and, being in the public domain, these wannabe radical-lite types, wilt when their nonsense is held up to scrutiny and their proposals are commented on by a knowing observer like Rufo. Any of us that put our ideas out there in the public domain, cannot refuse to allow or seek to suppress critical reaction to our descriptions and proposals to social problems.

 

Rufo: “As in any good farce, a serious issue lurks beneath the surface. It is not simply that professors are incapable of handling criticism—this has been true for a long while. It is that they are demanding the suppression of criticism altogether, under the rationale that it makes them fearful, violates their academic freedom and ’chill’ their speech.

 

These arguments are empty. The First Amendment recognizes their freedom of speech, as it does that of all Americans, but it does not entitle them to public deference or immunize them from criticism. Public university professors, in particular, are engaged in public discourse and, as such, their ideas must be submitted to debate and scrutiny. If Cassanello, Buggs, and their colleagues are too fearful to engage in this debate, they should assess their own standards, not demand that others accommodate them. Scholarship- without the possibility of robust criticism isn’t scholarship at all—it’s propaganda.

 

Finally, to those tenured radicals who argue that my reporting has chilled their speech, I say: good. This is a normal, salutary part of public life. Ideas get exposed to criticism, and, if the revealed as false or antithetical to the body politic, their purveyors ought to feel some desire to change  . . . Critical race theorists have long proposed another solution, namely, that ‘words that wound’ be banished from the public square. In the interest of advancing left-wing intersectionality. In practice this would mean that private citizens, journalists, and social commentators would no longer criticize the ideology of the state and public institutions—such as universities.”

 

My response: Rufo will allow them their free speech as public employees, but they must listen to alternative views too. He is for real freedom of speech and free and open exchange of ideas in the public square, and these radical authoritarians have finally met their match, and he is willing to let them talk, but his and other competing voices must be heard too.