Whistles and sirens: The chilling debate around academic freedom revisited

In a recent article about academic freedom, The Ghost of Joe McCarthy, American sociologist Carol Tavris links today’s debate around freedom of speech and the McCarthyist witch-hunts in early 1950s America. But if the parallels between the crass illiberalism of the “Red Scare” and recent debates in academia around antisemitism, gender theory and “cancel culture” spring to mind, so does Marx’s claim that history tends to repeat itself: first as tragedy, then as farce.