What's this? An HONEST "progressive" academic?

The enmity between the academic Left and academic freedom- indeed, between the Left and dissent of any kind- is axiomatic these days. It's not just that you can't open a chicken restaurant in Chicago unless the mayor likes your politics; you're going to take a major hit on your GPA, suffer all kinds of harassment and discrimination, and maybe be denied a degree- or far more likely, a job- if your prof and/or the Nomenklatura of your university isn't satisfied about your political orthodoxy.

Truth no longer matters on the academic Left. What matters is The Narrative. Indeed, as Nietzsche would have it, what serves The Narrative- what advances the cause, what furthers the will to power- is The Truth to the cultural Left.

But they're generally not honest enough to come right out and say it. If anything, they'll do all they can to deny, tap-dance, and generally obfuscate their own fundamental intolerance and intellectual dishonesty.

Not so Sandra Y.L. Korn, a member of Harvard's Class of '14 and a Harvard Crimson columnist and editorial writer. Harvard's "Rebel Without a Clue" says that “When an academic community observes research promoting or justifying oppression, it should ensure that this research does not continue." Science, she believes, is an oppressive discipline- "masculist," she calls it (horrors!)- and after all, how could it be otherwise? Science- in theory, anyway, if not always in practice (the Academic Left infests the sciences, too)- is fundamentally the unfettered pursuit of that non-existent and perhaps oppressive objective truth which so often conflicts with The Narrative,  pursued by following the evidence wherever it leads.

Nothing so profoundly rooted in logic an intellectual honesty could ever find favor with such as Ms. Korn.

Whether budding Marxist liberation theologians at ***A seminaries or academic totalitarians like Ms. Korn, "progressives" who do not face the task of appearing sane in the eyes of a largely non-hallucinating electorate have a hard time not coming off as parodies of themselves. But Ms. Korn and her ilk are all too real- and all to eager to silence anyone who dares disagree with The Narrative and The Agenda.

Rather than say more... well, read it in weep. Or laugh.

Weeping would be more charitable. But I admit that laughing is much easier.

Except that it's no laughing matter when an essentially totalitarian ideology gains such ascendency in our public life.