Over history, the commitment to freedom of speech is rare. For most of human history, elites who are certain they know the truth have held sway over everyone else, and woe betide anyone who dared to disagree. For a few centuries in the liberal parts of the world, free speech became the norm, but now the pendulum is swinging back, led by academics who want to silence criticism of their anointed visions (to borrow from Thomas Sowell).

In Chronicles, Professor Alexander Riley of Bucknell reviews a recent book that attacks freedom of speech: It’s Not Free Speech, by Michael Bérubé and Jennifer Ruth. He entitles his review “Advanced Ideological Disease In Academia,” and that’s just what the book reveals.

Riley writes,

It’s Not Free Speech is a shameful exercise in the deceptive assertion of the prerogatives of expertise by people who consistently break their own rules regarding how expertise is supposed to work. The authors, Michael Bérubé and Jennifer Ruth, demonstrate by their every word that their claim to respect expertise as something more than just an exercise of power in the service of an ideology is utterly hollow.

Anyone who wants to be prepared for the Red Army-like offensive against free speech in America should read Riley’s review.