In my high school European history class we did read Kant’s “What is Enlightenment” (and took his “Sapere aude” as our class motto) and also read Machiavelli and used some vulgar Hegelian thought in trying to understand history as more than a string of dates and names. It was my first experience with philosophy. It would be a shame if such things did get banned, but no more stupid than many other things banned or facing censure lately.

Imagine you went to a doctor and she told you she took dandruff and malignant melanomas equally seriously and really didn’t understand the significance of trying to understand why anyone should be more fearful of melanoma than dandruff. I for one would fine a new doctor as soon as possible. For one thing, merely saying that would be a pretty strong indicator that the doctor really didn’t know what she was talking about. But beyond that it would be an even better indicator that she had no idea where she should focus her time, attention, and concern. Or to take an example that’s perhaps closer to the phenomenon in question: Pedestrians are hit and injured by careless bicyclists and cars, but it would be crazy to say that a pedestrian should fear bicyclists and cars equally or even that there’s no good reason to decide which a pedestrian should fear more. Now imagine that some rich bigwig funded a political initiative supposedly focused on pedestrian safety which focused solely on the dangers of bicycles to pedestrians and ignored cars entirely. I think we’d all rightly suspect that he’s using supposed concern for pedestrians as a cover for a hidden agenda that’s more about being against bicycles (or perhaps for cars) than it is about concern for pedestrian safety. So there’s every reason to work out whether the right or the left is a bigger threat to academic freedom. I say the right is cancer and the left dandruff here. I might be wrong but I’d like to see some hard evidence or heck even some anecdotal evidence beyond this “There’s bad people on both sides!” rhetoric. I for one can’t think of a single effort by a Democratic legislature to dictate what colleges can teach or defund a college department or a single person whose career has been as thoroughly ruined by the left as say Salaita’s was by the right. The closest analog to Salaita is Stock and, while I wouldn’t minimize what she’s been through, the fact remains she has a plum position at this UATX whereas Salaita’s driving a bus. If you have examples of the left doing similar damage then please by all means share.
Also, I find talk of “cancel culture” by anyone trained in analytic philosophy, or honestly anyone with a college degree, just embarrassingly sloppy on so many levels. For one thing, as far as I can tell it just amounts to “Man, kids these days!” And the thing is there isn’t much real evidence that any of the groups who are blamed for “cancel culture” really do hold the attitudes it’s claimed they do. There’s that one Pew poll where millennials are more open to restrictions on offensive speech by the government than other groups (though still overwhelmingly opposed mind you!) that every right winger sites. But a Gallup poll that asked a similar question about restricting speech in colleges found millennials were actually more pro free speech in this context than other age groups. More importantly a lot of very different phenomena get blurred together. There’s a huge difference between arguing that a talk should be canceled and trying to get someone fired. And there’s a huge difference between both of those and say holding someone accountable for harassment. But I see all these treated as the same thing in these discussions. As someone whose self-censored out of fear of consequences I am worried about threats to academic freedom, and I do think academic freedom is threatened. Though I’m a lot more worried about adjuncts or lecturers who can’t teach as they feel they ought than I am about Peter Singer not getting a perch to pontificate about the value of different lives or Boghossian not being able to commit academic fraud with impunity. (For the record I do support allowing Singer to speak but I’m afraid I have to draw a line at giving people a carte blanche to falsify data or commit other forms of academic fraud). However, I believe that the threat to academic freedom is a complex phenomenon with multiple causes. If given some a bit more hard data I might even concede that “Kids these days!” is part of it. But I’d wager that adjunctification, the fragmentation of media, and the asymmetrical radicalization of our political parties have much more to do with it than those darn kids.
Anyway, I’ll stop threadjacking. But yeah what Guelzo said isn’t just wrong but embarrassingly stupid. I honestly can’t think of anything besides that old “Billy Madison” clip that’s at all an adequate response.