The Campus Surveillance State

That many college campuses have adopted a culture of intellectual intolerance has become something of a cliché, as well as a chess piece in the culture wars that are now consuming our politics. One side has turned the campus woke-scolds into an all-purpose bogeyman, a preview of an imminent totalitarianism the likes of which we haven’t seen since the Cultural Revolution’s struggle sessions; the other side tends to dismiss the problem as overblown, the rare excesses of a tiny minority.

A recent incident at Skidmore College, a small liberal arts school in upstate New York, provides a microcosm of what’s happening. It’s a story of the attempt to create a woke surveillance state in which all instances of possible intellectual disagreement are to be hunted down and purged. The result also shows us the limits of the success of this campaign—so far—but suggests something about the extent of its ambitions.

Read the rest at The Bulwark.