QotD: Academic Expulsions

Ever and anon another so-called radical professor is heaved out of a State university, always to the tune of bitter protests in the liberal weeklies. The usual defense of the trustees is that the doctrines he teaches are dangerous to the young. This puts him on all fours with Socrates — surely a somewhat large order. The real objection to his ideas, nine times out of ten, is that only idiots believe such things. But that objection has to be kept quiet, for it is saying nothing aposite against a professor in the average State university to prove that he is an idiot.

H.L. Mencken, "Prima Facie", Baltimore Evening Sun, 1931-07-25