"When your next college free speech controversy erupts, don’t blame liberals.” That's the message of Georgetown's Jacques Berlinerblau.
Jacques distinguishes between liberals and leftists.
In my experience, liberal professors play far less of a role in these incidents than a group we might refer to as the “radical left.” This third camp is composed of a vast, and diverse array of quite serious scholars whose animus towards liberal ideas often exceeds its disdain for conservative ones.
If you want to conceptualize the differences between liberal and leftist professors in political terms—which, I repeat, is always hazardous—think of it this way. Liberal professors are the types that probably voted for Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential elections. Radical left professors likely wrote her off as a dreaded “neo-liberal.” Their primary votes might have been cast for Bernie Sanders—as irritatingly “mainstream” as the social-democratic candidate might have been to them. In the general election they might have opted for Jill Stein, or sat it out altogether in protest of American capitalism, imperialism, hegemony, etc.
Yet whereas Stein received 1 percent of the popular vote, one recent national study of professors in all disciplines demonstrated that roughly 15.6 percent at non-sectarian schools self-identify as “far left.”... if we were to look solely at professors in the humanities and interpretive social sciences, my guess is that the 15 percent figure would be two or three times higher—and more so at elite institutions. In other words, at a nationally ranked school a department of English, Women’s Studies, Art History, French, African-American Studies, Spanish, Philosophy, Anthropology, Film Studies or Sociology is likely to have more far-left faculty than liberals and conservatives combined...
As far as many conservatives are concerned—and even researchers who survey the political leanings of professors—liberals and leftists all look alike. But their differences are significant. Liberals didn’t exult over Iran’s 1979 Islamist revolution as did the immensely influential philosopher Michel Foucault, the patron saint of today’s academic radicals. Liberals would never wish that the United States suffer a “million more Mogadishus,” or refer to the victims of 9/11 as “little Eichmanns,” to invoke some memorable fringe-left catch phrases. Liberals don’t whip themselves up into a frenzy over the legitimacy of the state of Israel, a position associated with the esteemed literary critic Edward Said. Liberals don’t reflexively deconstruct and place shudder-quotes around concepts such as “Enlightenment,” “Democracy,” “Reason” and “Religious Freedom.”
There's a degree of truth to this. But, as with the USSR, the radical left has the strength that it does because most left of center, whether they call themselves liberals or progressives, act as their useful idiots. Their governing principle is no enemies to the left.
Worse still, the current intersectional incarnation, which hides leftist politics behind identity politics, has the unequivocal and unthinking support of the people who call themselves liberals. It's why these thugs have been able to paralyze administrators and faculty by screaming about their pain, crying that their bodies and minds are being destroyed, and demanding safe spaces.
They may not follow the argument to its logical conclusion, but neither do they offer any meaningful intellectual resistance. And that's because they think that the difference is more about tactics than outcome.
Much of the motivating power for this does indeed come from the radical left. Specifically from a few radical faculty members who actually implement what they teach. But all that was necessary for their triumph was the complicity of "liberals".
Stopping extremism within a movement is never easy. And while some liberals did indeed stand up to Communism, many did not. And today rather few are willing to stand up for abstractions like Reason or Freedom of Speech to their political allies.
There aren't really three groups on campus, but two. The left and the hard left.
The hard left is eating the modern campus alive. Destroying any shred of intellectual study and integrity. But it's the left that is letting them do it.