In higher education, not even the study and practice of music is immune to leftist control. And the leftists who call the shots love to hound out non-leftists.

In today’s Martin Center article, I write about two such cases.

At Western Michigan, trombonist Daniel Mattson had enjoyed years on the faculty without any incident, until another teacher discovered that he had previously lived as a gay man but was no longer, and had written a book explaining why. (As we know, the Left is only pro-choice when it comes to abortion.) That discovery led to a campaign to get rid of him, one that the school administration went along with.

And at the University of North Texas, Professor Timothy Jackson made the terrible mistake of taking issue with another music professor’s claims that the long-deceased German musicologist Heinrich Schenker was a racist and therefore his musical analysis is bad. Rather than argue against Jackson’s position, the academic mob went after him personally. As you’d probably guess, the administration caved in to the mob, punishing Jackson for daring to confront weak arguments.

Both professors sued. Western Michigan settled with Mattson and Jackson’s case against North Texas is still in the courts. The most tantalizing feature of the latter is that Jackson seeks damages against the school officials responsible personally. The courts have been receptive to his argument that they should not be able to hide behind “qualified immunity.”