cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/64975432
But this isn’t just about professors; it’s about all of us. This is the most flagrant attack on higher education in my lifetime. Why are politicians reducing public colleges and universities to vehicles of state propaganda? Why are self-proclaimed proponents of free speech turning around and using state repression to enforce speech codes on our campuses? Why can’t we speak openly about our social world in sociology classes? Why are unqualified appointees from the business world dictating to Ph.D.-holding academics how they should teach and which textbooks they must use?
What we really need are people beyond the university itself — the general public — speaking out about how ludicrous this all is. We are now living through an era of state censorship, politically motivated firings, and state-produced propaganda materials. If this isn’t authoritarianism in higher education, I don’t know what is.
Opinion piece by Zachary Levenson is associate professor of sociology at Florida International University.
EDITED TO ADD (in case some miss my comment)
Imagine the following scenario: You’re teaching Introduction to Sociology at a community college in Florida, and today, you’re trying to explain the well-documented pay gap between men and women in the United States. You check the guidance you just received from your dean, who received instructions via email from the executive vice chancellor of the Florida College System. The instructions state explicitly that explaining “unequal outcomes between men and women” in terms of “institutional sexism” would violate state law.
In a democracy the government gives students the opportunity of giving information of multiple sources. That is why in Germany we have many self research tasks for history, politics and other social related academic subjects. For science academic subjects we do it too, but more rarely.
The reason why you think “Schools have always been propaganda machines” is that the USA was never a real democracy. It is a Empire with 2 big oligarchy factions: Democratic Party and Republican Party. Because of First-past-the-post voting and the Electoral College it is easy to bribe/threat a small size of people to cheat the vote outcome. Also because they want to be votes again they just go with the popular parties again thus USA is a 2 party system. The Democratic Socialists party and Green Party do exist in the USA but they have no power, so some work the Democratic Party.
Oligarchs stay rich by staying in power. They make the poor even more poor so they do not have time or money to even go to demonstrate. They simply want the majority to stay dumb even at the cost of the world which is going to burn because of climate change.
The USA made sure to fix these issues in Germany after the Nazi regime’s end. But they did not for themselves.
USA has subject states:
quasi-protectorates:
2003–2011 U.S. Occupation and Direct Control of Iraq: Today it may still is under the hood with CIA’s control. The CIA is very able to install vassals into another country.
NATO: Just like any other Empire. It has military bases all over the world. While it is not or mostly not occupation, it is still has power with the threat of suddenly send the army home and leaving the land unprotected from other empires/kingdoms/dictatorial regimes.