IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - March 2022 - 28

Book Review
required to embrace the ideology of gender indeterminacy
and queer studies, of " white privilege, "
" toxic masculinity, " " post-colonialism, " and so on,
or face all the dire consequences of the " cancel "
culture: expulsion from learned societies, inability
to publish, public censure, loss of job. Twitter has
become the 21st-century equivalent of the Salem
witch trials. Ceaseless inquisitions by Title IX deans,
given carte blanche to terrorize faculty, often on the
basis of the flimsiest charges by disgruntled students
or malicious colleagues, have destroyed what little
is left of academic freedom in this country. The list
of shattered lives grows longer every day, in a leftist
reign of terror that makes the McCarthy period in
retrospect look like " Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm "
(see https://theartifactuals.com/hostis-publicus/)
One of the professors in this online list of enemies of
the people, which is regularly updated, has committed
suicide. Chomsky himself signed an open letter
published in July 2020 decrying the present left-wing
reign of terror (https://harpers.org/a-letter-on-justiceand-open-debate/).
Social justice warrior nonentities
subsequently launched an ad hominem attack
on Chomsky and the other luminaries who had
published the letter, suggesting that the very fact of
their " privilege " rendered them ineligible to speak in
public. The signatories to the letter were not moguls
or wealthy heiresses, mind you, but people like J.
K. Rowling, a writer who rose to prominence from
poverty by dint of creative genius and hard work.
Thus, according to the criterion of the crusaders for
" social justice " only someone (a politically correct
someone) who has never worked to achieve anything,
has never had an original idea and tested it by
experiment, or has never demonstrated talent otherwise,
has a right to talk, write, teach, or do scientific
work. One imagines that even Trofim Lysenko and
his fellow savants Beria and Stalin would balk at this.
But it is happening in America right now, and, given
the testimony of history, it should alarm every reader
of this journal: may I remind you that Stalin's purges
began with the show trials of engineers.
There is a very good play on the McCarthy hearings,
The Investigator (1954), by the Canadian Jewish
playwright Reuben Ship. It was originally produced
for the Canadian Broadcasting Company: the savage
antics of the junior Senator from Michigan and his ilk
appalled our freer neighbors to the north. The McCarthy
purges decimated the entertainment industry
and there are many fine movies about that aspect
of the period, most recently Hail, Caesar! (2016), a
darkly comic film by the Coen Brothers about the
Hollywood Ten. Much research has focused on J.
Robert Oppenheimer's problems with Red-baiters. A
scholarly study of all the scientists affected by the
Red scare in the Cold War epoch of American history,
based upon carefully researched archives such
as the FBI files reproduced in the book under review,
would be an important contribution to historical
scholarship. Such a study, in the view of this reader,
would benefit greatly from an appreciation of the
historical context and the severe trials to which science
and its practitioners were put, on the other side
of the Iron Curtain at the time. But were the authors
to compare the repressions of that time to those of
the present, as this review does, their book might not
be published; and if it were, it might imperil their
careers. And that is the most chilling truth of all. 
James R. Russell is an Emeritus Professor
of Armenian Studies with Harvard University,
Cambridge, MA, USA.
 Direct questions and comments about this article
to James R. Russell, Harvard University, Cambridge,
MA, USA; russelldeep@gmail.com.
28
IEEE Technology and Society Magazine
https://www.theartifactuals.com/hostis-publicus/ https://www.harpers.org/a-letter-on-justice-and-open-debate/ https://www.harpers.org/a-letter-on-justice-and-open-debate/
IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - March 2022

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