There have been a good number of cases recently in which non-leftist academics have been viciously attacked for no reason other than the desire by those who style themselves “progressive” to silence dissenters. The most egregious among them, in my view, is the way Ohio Northern University law professor Scott Gerber has been treated by his school. Who else but a true-blue leftist would insist on having armed personnel on hand when a professor is removed from his classroom?

Peter Wood of the National Association of Scholars has been all over this disgusting case, and he has now sent another letter to ONU president Melissa Baumann.

ONU’s only response to date has been a sniveling letter from its Office of Communications and Marketing. Wood writes,

While I have not heard back from you directly in response to my letter of May 14, or my subsequent article, last week I received an email from David A. Kielmeyer, Executive Director of ONU’s Office of Communications and Marketing. Mr. Kielmeyer dutifully informed me that ONU “remains steadfast in its commitment to the open exchange of ideas, regardless of viewpoint.” And he requested that “NAS and other interested parties to withhold judgement until the process is completed and all of the facts may be shared.”

Translation: Please shut up and forget all about this.

Not a chance, Kielmeyer. Americans who still care about common decency aren’t going to let ONU get away with this.

Wood continues: “If Professor Gerber has committed some illegal act, presumably the matter would be before the police and he would be arrested and charged. That hasn’t happened, which leads to the supposition that Professor Gerber must have, in the eyes of the administration, violated some internal rule. But what rule? The unwillingness or inability of the university to make an explicit charge strongly suggests that the attempt to fire Professor Gerber has no sufficient predicate, and this has been a matter of, ‘Let’s get rid of him and find a reason later.’ Or ‘We know we don’t like him, and we are bound to find something that will stick if we just clear him out.’”

For some reason, this reminds me of the Dreyfus affair.