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Surveying both victims and perpetrators of political discrimination in the US, the UK and Canada, researchers at an academic think tank have found intolerance toward dissent is only just beginning - and things may get much worse.
Purporting to be the first paper of its kind to "investigate authoritarianism and political discrimination in academia," the
study, conducted by the Center for the Study of Partisanship and Ideology's Eric Kaufmann, seemed to support conservatives' longstanding complaints that they and their political viewpoints face disproportionate levels of ideologically-motivated censorship.
While what the researchers called "hard authoritarianism" - no-platforming, social media brigading, 'open' letters, dismissal campaigns, and formal complaints - was comparatively rare,
the absence of any opposing intellectual force meant that the militant cancel-culture activists often got their way. Meanwhile, "soft authoritarianism" -
punishing non-conformists by limiting their ability to publish, win grants for their work, be promoted or retain current positions - provided an added burden (and incentive to keep quiet about their beliefs) to conservative academics.
In the US, UK and Canada, some 40 percent of academics told the researchers they would not hire a Trump supporter, and one out of three in Britain would refuse a position to a Brexit supporter. But there's one scarlet letter that will get a person ostracized even further in academia, they found:
being considered a gender-critical feminist, i.e. holding a biological-based view of sex.
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