Professors Beware: Administration Threatens Academic Freedom

In August the Department of Education threatened to withhold grant monies to programs that present Islam in a favorable light.

According to the Washington Post  “The agency ordered the Duke-UNC Consortium for Middle East Studies to revise its offerings or risk losing its $235,000 federal grant.”  The administration claims that the program advances an “ideological agenda and promotes a positive view of Islam while virtually ignoring Judaism, Christianity and other religions.” The letter was published this week in the Federal Register and is largely interpreted to be a warning to academia. 

This must sound familiar to those who studied authoritarian regimes.  The state dictating what can and cannot be taught are essential to maintaining a demagogue’s power.  First universities will lose federal funding.  Then watch for professors to be fired, for not demonzing Islam and for other “offenses” that do not conform to the administration’s agenda.  

Next will be lawyers’ arrests.  (One judge has already been indicted for not cooperating with ICE.)  Law professors beware.  Our dual identity may make us more vulnerable but also must make us more resistant.