To Be an Independent Mind in the University is Not Tolerated Today

There's an open letter going around, apparently from a professor in the history department at UC Berkeley, and it's not what you'd expect.  It's a very well thought through, careful, and serious letter about the current issues of race, policing, and the black community, and I highly recommend reading it (Pastebin deleted it, but the internet is forever).  As you might expect, it's not been well received by the rest of the UC Berkeley History Department, apparently:

Of course, that it wasn't well received is unsurprising, but that the *department* would openly come out and tweet a condemnation, and claim it goes against their values- without stating why or how- was a bit of an eyebrow raiser to me.  It's perhaps the most anti-intellectual thing I've seen in the University wars and the shutting down of the right on campus.  Typically, they do this via individual counter opinions and student uprisings, or bring in outside agitators to shut down campus speakers, or some other proxy.  To have a department come out like this is a bit shocking honestly.  Though the ability of anything like this to shock me diminishes by the day as we see more and more like actions.