=====

Crackdown on Academic Freedom: Prof Under Attack for Asking Students to Think Independently

A professor at New York University, Mark Crispin Miller, is suing 19 colleagues for libel after they signed a letter to the school dean demanding a “review” of his conduct because he urged students to look into the scientific rationale for the mask mandates and to assess the truthfulness of the media drive to promote them.
By
Dr. Joseph Mercola

Story at-a-glance:

- Propaganda is an organized attempt to get large numbers of people to think or do something — or not think or do something. It’s not like classical rhetoric, which is about persuasion through argument, but rather a means of sub-rational manipulation.

- For the past two decades, professor Mark Crispin Miller has taught a course on propaganda at New York University, in the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development.

- In September 2020 after urging his students to look into the scientific rationale for the mask mandates, to assess the truthfulness of the propaganda drive promoting them, he was subject to an administrative “review” for that and other alleged crimes.

- Miller is suing 19 of his department colleagues for libel after they signed a letter to the school dean demanding a “review” of Miller’s conduct, falsely accusing him of “explicit” hate speech, mounting “attacks on students” “advocating for an unsafe learning environment” and discouraging his class from wearing masks.

- Miller’s case shows that the infringement of academic freedom is inimical to independent thinking and free inquiry. Without such freedom, higher education is more than likely to teach students only to believe what they are told by state and corporate powers, which means not educating them at all — a failure damaging to them and catastrophic for democracy.

Full article:

https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/academic-freedom-propaganda-mark-crispin-miller/

*************************************************************