No, We’re Not in a New McCarthy Era

Is repression on campuses today worse than during McCarthyism? It’s a claim that’s increasingly made, on both the right and the left. Samuel Abrams, a Sarah Lawrence professor and fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, recently concluded that “intellectual life today on campus is worse than the McCarthy era,” an assessment that was promptly echoed by a New York Sun headline. Liberals have likewise argued that there is a “new campus McCarthyism” caused by conservative forces