On January 20, former Vice President Joe Biden officially became President of the United States. An emboldened wave of cancel culture marked the weeks leading up to his inauguration. American institutions — such as Big Tech and Hollywood — hit the gas on their eternal endeavor to rid the airwaves of former President Donald Trump and his supporters.
Meanwhile, academia — one of the most left-leaning institutions in the nation — launched their own renewed cancel culture campaign.
Students, professors, and alumni at the nation’s leading universities are demanding that administrators preemptively bar former Trump administration officials from teaching positions and guest speaking opportunities. Others are calling for the revocation of Republican lawmakers’ degrees.
The charges range from “opposition to science” to “open sedition against the United States of America.” Predictably, some academics compared Trump officials to orchestrators of the Holocaust.
Here are five examples of the ivory tower’s latest cancel culture crusade.
Harvard University
Students at America’s most iconic university wrote to their administrators, demanding that they withhold speaking engagements and teaching positions from Trump administration alumni.
The letter frames this decision as a “system of accountability” for the officials’ alleged opposition to “free and honest inquiry in the unfettered pursuit of truth, the right to vote, a free and independent press, checks and balances, the peaceful transfer of power, and the rule of law.”
The students nevertheless insisted that they are “fully committed to free speech and debate of difficult subjects.”
Weeks later, another petition from Harvard community members urged that the school revoke the degrees of Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-TX), and outgoing White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany.
Citing the January 6 Capitol Hill attack, the authors alleged that the three prominent Republicans “do not and should not represent a university committed to ‘strengthening democracy’ and ‘the advancement of justice.’”
Although the three officials appear to be safe for now, one Harvard alumna was not so lucky. The university kicked Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) from the Harvard Kennedy School Institute of Politics’ Senior Advisory Committee, citing her objection to four states’ Electoral College votes.
In defiance, Rep. Stefanik stated that it was a “rite of passage and badge of honor” to be canceled by her alma mater, declaring that it had caved to the “woke far-Left.”
George Washington University
Students at George Washington University echoed the demands of their fellow Jacobins at Harvard in demanding that their school refuse to hire Trump alumni.
The managing director of student newspaper The GW Hatchet argued that “universities should not be in the business of hiring people who were complicit in atrocious policies and opposition to science and integrity.”
“From the creators of family separation and election interference, the Trump administration is coming to a university near you — unless GW turns away their job applications,” he wrote.
“As Adolf Eichmann pled at Nuremberg that it was a ‘misfortune to become entangled in these atrocities,’ Trump officials cannot be allowed to feign ignorance,” continued the student. “Administrators should not take the bait.”
In addition to comparing Trump appointees to members of Germany’s Third Reich, the author judged members of the Trump administration as guilty of remaining “silent in the face of hate speech” and denying the “very existence” of science.
University of Virginia
The editorial board for University of Virginia student newspaper The Cavalier Daily banded together to convey the need to “expel elected officials who encouraged the Capitol insurrection.”
The students called on State Senator and gubernatorial candidate Amanda Chase (R-VA), as well as House of Representatives members Rep. Bob Good (R-VA), Rep. Rob Whittman (R-VA), Rep. Morgan Griffith (R-VA), and Rep. Ben Cline (R-VA), to “take full responsibility” for their “giving credence to dangerous disinformation.”
Cancel culture is by no means a new technique for leftists at the University of Virginia. In 2018, two professors noisily resigned from their posts at UVA’s Miller Center following its decision to hire former Trump legislative director Marc Short.
In a Washington Post op-ed, the professors argued that the “Marc Short decision was different from previous appointments at the center because Donald Trump is different from previous presidents.” They explained that Trump has departed sharply from predecessors “by breaking the norms of presidential behavior, by upending the rules of civil discourse, by casting doubt on the meaning of truth and by embracing the rhetoric of racism and white supremacy.”
Stanford University
Faculty, students, and alumni at Stanford University — the alma mater of Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) — demanded that the school “sever all ties” with the prominent lawmaker.
Condemning him “in the strongest possible terms” for charges such as “open sedition against the United States of America,” the authors of the petition argued that Sen. Hawley bears “direct responsibility” for the attack against the Capitol Building.
The authors urged lawmakers to investigate Sen. Hawley for “seditious conspiracy” and called his continued role in public life “a clear and present danger to American democracy.”
Nearly 8,500 individuals signed the petition — a figure representing 121% of the school’s entire undergraduate population.
An opinion editor for student newspaper The Stanford Daily wrote an article entitled “Don’t be like Josh Hawley.” She told her fellow students that their task is to “safeguard the country and community from producing and enabling the Hawleys of history, endowed with power but uncommitted to the principles this power should serve.”
Princeton University
Ever the object of the Left’s ire, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) was condemned by his former classmates at Princeton University.
“An oath to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies foreign and domestic precedes the taking of all elected offices in America,” read a petition endorsed by nearly 600 members of the Princeton class of 1992. “Promoting false claims of voter fraud that lawyers are too afraid to present in courts where there are actual consequences for lying, and trying to use the ensuing controversy to challenge a constitutionally proper proceeding to ratify the decision of the Electoral College are, in our opinion, utterly inconsistent with this oath.”
The Princeton alumni also condemned Sen. Cruz for “unconscionably” sending out a fundraising appeal in the midst of the Capitol Building riot.
On January 7 in a Twitter exchange with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Sen. Cruz clarified that he told his team to halt automated fundraising messages within minutes of the attack’s onset.
The views expressed in this opinion piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.