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So do you think there should be a censorship arms war or do you want more academic freedom?
You left out a third option: I want a magical pink unicorn who shits gold and whose farts cure cancer. I genuinely see that as more plausible than getting our current university system to support academic freedom.
It's all quite unfortunate, and I suspect there is some genius way to get from where we are to a healthy higher education system without use of a flamethrower. But, no one, and certainly not Trump, knows that genius way, so this is maybe the best of a bunch of bad options.
If the main observable action when in power is to further the downward trend against academic freedom, why should anyone trust the claims being made? Actions speak louder than words after all.
If we want academic freedom we should make moves towards academic freedom, not be indistinguishable from the censors.
Yes, exactly. This is why current complaints about the lack of academic freedom cannot be taken seriously.
If Ukraine wants peace, they should make moves towards peace, not shoot missiles into Russian territory.
Do you think the only complaints about academic freedom come from the same people who were censoring before?
I hope you are aware there are tons of free speech and first amendment advocacy groups, left and right leaning libertarians, and other stuff like that who opposed left censorship before and are opposing right censorship now.
Yeah, I think most people complaining about this now were either directly participating in the censorship, approving of it, or at most not all that bothered by it.
Sure, there were some pro-free speech groups, I think FIRE is the most prominent. Libertarians are non-entities though, and it would be an odd one if they complained about government grants being cut.
You can be against government grant funding as a concept and be against unconstitutional anti free speech idealogical selection in grant funds if it does exist.
I'm not sure you can. The whole point of goverent grants is fund what the market will not, and thus be distortionary, from a libertarian point of view.
And any libertarian-lite attemot at salvaging this by saying "well, as long as we have government grants, they should be assigned neutrally" runs into the problem of them not having been neutral for decades, and said libertarian not uttering a peep about it, as well as "neutrality" being hard to define in the he context.
You can not support something existing but also believe that if it does exist it should at least be done in a fair and freedom supporting manner.
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