Tenured professors might soon be a thing of the past, and that could prove particularly frightening if one Republican presidential candidate gets a hold of the Department of Education. Tenure protections were created in order to foster original thinking on university campuses and protect academic researchers from censorship. But a Ben Carson presidency would see the Department of Education turned into an Orwellian Ministry of Truth responsible for monitoring on campus speech. Under Carson’s plan, students would act as the government’s spies reporting professors for the department to investigate. For a better understanding of what a Carson presidency might look like, head down to your local library and checkout The Handmaid’s Tale.
GOP Candidate Would Censor Free Speech at Universities
Ian MacAllen
Ian MacAllen is the author of Red Sauce: How Italian Food Became American (Rowman & Littlefield, April 2022). His writing has appeared in Chicago Review of Books, Southern Review of Books, The Offing, 45th Parallel Magazine, Little Fiction, Vol 1. Brooklyn, and elsewhere. He tweets @IanMacAllen and is online at IanMacAllen.com.