David Whetham
I’ve just returned from a professional military education conference in the US. It was like watching a good friend have a nervous breakdown. While the event was excellent, many of the attendees - predominantly US academics and military folks - appeared, perhaps unsurprisingly, in a state of shock. The headlines from Washington each day were dominated by what would have been called scandals and outrages in any other period of history, but are now “the new normal”.
It is not normal.
Colleagues were receiving emails from their institutions during the conference saying that offending books needed removing from the library immediately, including autobiographies of key people from American history. Other colleagues confirmed that their curricula was being assessed by political commissars looking for “inappropriate materials”, and pre-booked speakers were being uninvited out of fear that they might be perceived as straying from approved topics. The denunciation of teaching staff who dare to mention let alone teach the new (vaguely defined) forbidden subject areas by (a minority of) students has started. While book burnings have not commenced in public, the culling of material and suppression of views that might offend approved ideology is well underway - the stories emerging are real - this is not a prediction, it is happening.
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