Academics ignore the anniversary of 1984 because they know they’re living it out

Academics ignore the anniversary of 1984 because they know they’re living it out
by Erec Smith

Seventy years ago today, George Orwell published 1984, a now-famous novel about a dystopian future in which totalitarianism is a universal political truth and free thought is eliminated in the name of peace and solidarity. Modern academics, especially scholars in the humanities, have long sung the books’ praises, but the academy has been suspiciously quiet during the buildup to this most recent anniversary.

Why is the anniversary of 1984 being ignored? Perhaps because the same educators that once used the book to teach the dangers of totalitarianism and censorship have become the very Orwellian monsters they fought against.

Academia has increasingly begun to emulate Orwell’s thought police. Dissenting voices are not engaged, but shouted down. Colleges are pressured to fire professors for conveying views deemed less than liberal. In particular, the humanities have become a collective Big Brother in academia and, by extension, other leftist spaces.


Senior Political Correspondent David Drucker on the expanded Washington Examiner m
At best, a dissenter from the status quo may get “Sarah Lawrenced.” In “Who Counts as a Person of Color,” Eboo Patel writes of a student of Sarah Lawrence College who self-censored because of the certain backlash from liberals that speaking out would instigate.

According to this student, being “Sarah Lawrenced” occurs “when the activists just ice you out without telling you why. They just stop talking to you — and then everyone else does too.” Synonyms abound for people who have been shunned in this way; “erased” and “canceled” are but a couple.

Neither this student nor this campus are outliers in this Orwellian phenomenon.


At worst, when dissenters do dare to speak, mobbing often occurs. Mobbing, a collective form of bullying meant to shut down dissenters, is no stranger to academia and has been substantially exacerbated by the rise of social media. College campuses spend hours and large sums of money to keep students “safe” when someone with dissenting, and sometimes inflammatory, opinions steps on campus. Such tribalism discourages dissent and open inquiry.

Just ask Kathleen Stock.

Her criticism, not refutation, of Britain’s Equality Act for ignoring conflicts of interest between transgender women and biological females induced an angry mob that has attacked her on social media, even though she has clearly expressed her support for the trans community.

Meanwhile, students at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia have demanded the removal of feminist professor Camille Paglia as well. Additionally, philosopher Rebecca Tuvel’s peer-reviewed essay faced calls for retraction after an online mob considered the essay, which juxtaposed the concept of transracialism to transgenderism, an unacceptable thought crime.

All these academics have been labeled “dangerous” for expressing opinions that do not absolutely and unequivocally bow to liberal dogma.

I, too, have experienced such mobbing during my career as an academic. Earlier this year, on an email listserv for scholars in the field of rhetoric and composition, I expressed my opinions about the efficacy of some anti-racist pedagogies in the teaching of writing. Mind you, my criticism was not against anti-racism, per se (I am black, that would be pretty foolish on my part).

My criticism was about the way anti-racist initiatives were being carried out. This did not stop droves of people, both white people and people of color, from calling me a fascist, a white supremacist, and a bully. This scene could have been taken straight out of a dystopian novel.

Orwell’s 1984 illustrated the detriments of totalitarian thought, and disturbingly, academic liberals across the Western world are imitating its worst excesses. So, their silence on the novel’s anniversary isn’t so surprising after all. Perhaps they see the inherent hypocrisy in their past celebration of this novel and would rather refrain from having others see it as well.

It is both sad and ironic that academia, supposedly one of the front lines in defending truth and deliberative democracy, would so enthusiastically take on the role of thought police. Unlike Orwell’s Big Brother, contemporary leftist academics are motivated by the desire to keep marginalized people safe when expressing themselves.

However, providing every citizen with a voice is not the only litmus test for a true democracy. The other side of that coin is that other voices can disagree without repercussion. This democratic ideal is under such attack in many academic spaces that Orwell would be turning over in his grave if he knew.


Erec Smith is an associate professor of rhetoric at York College of Pennsylvania.
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/red-alert-politics/academics-ignore-the-anniversary-of-1984-because-they-know-theyre-living-it-out