To the numerous fronts of the Trump fight, one more was added. More precisely, it was added back in 2017, when Trump issued a decree on the protection of rights and freedoms on university campuses, but then he was not taken completely seriously, and the time was different. Then, Trump's opponents believed that the hated president did not have long to rule. Whether the impeachment, or he himself will accept the democratic public and resign.
But the president turned out to be tough, you won’t get him down, his plans are extensive, so protection of rights and freedoms (suffocation of rights and freedoms) on campuses has now attracted the attention of the public.
Attracted also because university liberties have now reached the highest degree. We are not talking about the fact that professorship in universities is predominantly liberal (in the American sense of the word, that is, left and even leftist). And what is priest, so is the parish, in the sense of the student body. However, the shelters of science have long become the shelters of unlimited Progressorism.
In 1991, Paul Hollander’s “Anti-Americanism” capital work came out in the United States. It was not about the machinations of communism aimed at undermining American democracy (as the term is usually interpreted). The book was about the American progressive public, with some wild ecstasy destroying what is now called “claps” in Russian.
There was a lot of talk about the destroyers of American braces, in detail, and a whole chapter of the book was devoted specifically to universities. Where, in the opinion, Professor Hollander is practicing splits and lack of faith. And not only do they exercise - the atmosphere of terror prevails against dissent, that is, against all professors, students, guest lecturers who do not follow the latest discoveries of the All Conquering Progressive Teaching.
For 30 years, if something has changed, then only for the worse.
Of course, the fact that university freedom turns around the freedom to go about under the command of a progressive sergeant major, we have known before. It was a glorious year of 1968 in France, and even in the backward Russia back in 1899 there was something completely on that line.
At Kiev University, “they came up with an original way to protest against the actions of the Cossacks: it was decided not to learn. It turned out according to the saying "in the garden of an elder, and in Kiev the baklushi beat". You can not learn, if you like it and if we assume that the Great Don Army or the glorious Kuban will suffer some damage from student idleness. But the strikers, "protesting against violence," themselves perpetrated the most blatant and brazen violence, throwing professors and non-striking students from the audience; they began to beat not baklushi, but their own comrades for the fact that they did not share their views on the fight against the Cossacks ”. ( VV Shulgin “What we don’t like about them ...”. ) Nothing is new under the moon.
But you need to know Trump, who is very fond of the old Obkom method - shaking your fist on the table and saying: “We will break this business!” Campus residents overdid it with not enough progressive professors, and the US president decided to break the pedocracy.
The method of breaking was very simple. If the university is completely private, then go ahead and do what you want. What will be the price of a diploma issued by such a blessed monastery is another matter.
But if the school receives government subsidies, then if you please observe the US Constitution, in particular the First Amendment, which claims the right to say what you think and teach what you think. And not just the politically correct catechism.
It is hard to say how this will end, but Trump is stubborn.
As for us, the university order is still more strict, far from pedocracy, and the educational bureaucracy dominates, gushing forth with irrepressible reformism. And if in a politically correct catechism there is at least its own logic, if not everyone likes it, then there is no logic at all in the competences and trajectories. Net administrative delight.
But the similarity of American problems is in culture. If in the US there are no subsidies for culture, therefore there are no problems, then we have them very much.
The desire of the masters of culture to feed at the expense of the "filthy Raska" and, at the same time, to water the "filthy Rashka" from all the aromatic tools has long been surprised by its inconsistency. At your own expense, water as much as you like, and somehow charge it for the government one.
Servitude towards America is generally worthless, but some initiatives by the current president are not without interest. In particular, a reminder of the principle of the chairman of the KGB V.E. Sevenfold "even a pig does not shit where it eats."
The point of view of the author may not coincide with the position of the editorial board.