*6.1. Limitations*

Nonetheless, there are certain important limitations to the perspective presented here. Although academic censorship may be on the rise, in historical and international terms, this still pales in comparison to what has often occurred under religious, monarchic, or authoritarian regimes. Current censoriousness, at least in the U.S., is also less severe than it was during the height of McCarthyism and the Second Red Scare (roughly 1947–1960), when hundreds of faculty lost their jobs [11]. Although that era may have seemed like governmen<sup>t</sup> censorship, in fact, it was the universities themselves that did most of the firing. Put differently, administrators and many faculty enthusiastically embraced purging communists from their ranks [10].

Nonetheless, if academic censorship is on the rise, it raises the question, "Why now?" Our review was only intended to describe the social and psychological processes by which such censorship occurs. Therefore, an important limitation of the present perspective is that it has not sought to explain why it seems to be increasing now.

In speculation, we sugges<sup>t</sup> that several forces may have come together to contribute to this rise in calls for censorship and suppression, at least in the U.S. and possibly elsewhere. First, many analyses indicate a recent dramatic rise in what is sometimes called tribalism [59] or affective polarization [60]). These concepts refer to an intense identification with and emotional attachment to one's political ingroups, along with a concomitant tendency to despise, derogate, and demonize one's opponents [61–63].

Along with tribalism and polarization, some have argued that there has been an increasing sacralization of victimhood (e.g., [64]). Combine these developments with a number of disciplines in academia skewing left in their politics [28,65,66], then the demonization of academics who are perceived to threaten groups viewed by many of those on the left as warranting special protections (marginalized groups, stigmatized groups, etc.) may seem almost inevitable. Of course, demonization by itself is not quite enough to produce censorship. The final ingredient, which may act more like pouring an accelerant on an already smoldering fire, may be social media. Platforms like Facebook and Twitter have enabled outraged academics to quickly organize into large mobs through open letters, email campaigns, electronic petitions calling for sanctions, and public denunciations. Authorities (editors and administrators) may either be persuaded or concerned about their organization's public image, and decide it is either justified or simply easier to sanction the target than to have to deal with a mob or "explaining" to the public why they are defending a person others have publicly denounced as despicable.

#### *6.2. What Should Be Done?*

A most pressing question, unaddressed in this paper, is what should be done about this state of affairs? We concluded our paper not with answers, but with an attempt to begin a conversation about how to address this emergen<sup>t</sup> social problem.

One possibility is nothing should be done, which would be the recommendation if one believes this is an excellent state of affairs. This is the position one would adopt if one believes some academics deserve the authority to prevent others even from airing ideas, such as the existence of rapid onset gender dysphoria, the reality of biological sex, or that polar bear populations are actually rising.

On the other hand, some may believe this is a bad state of affairs, and that no one should have the authority to prevent others from getting a hearing for their ideas. In that case, what can be done to prevent scholarship suppression? Our review suggests that some answers might involve creating disincentives to suppress by appeal to authorities. What might such disincentives be? Some possibilities:


Although these are three hypothetical options, none seem particularly likely to actually solve the problem of suppression by academic outrage mob. Suing is quite difficult and, in the U.S., not likely to succeed. Attempts to denounce the denouncers are a recipe for the escalation, not the dialing back, of outrage mobs. Additionally, given how regularly authorities have caved to these mobs in the past, we see no simple path to changing their behavior, as desirable as that may be.

Academia is littered with cases of influential papers and ideas having initial difficulty getting published. However, the work is not suppressed if the scholar can revise the paper, make it stronger, and attempt to publish it at the same or different outlet. Scholarship suppression has a superficially similar appearance to rejection—in both cases, scholarship does not see the light of day. However, there is a key difference, when scholarship is suppressed, it does not ge<sup>t</sup> a fair hearing. It is denounced and rejected, never submitted, or never conducted in the first place. Rejection is quality control, however imperfect; suppression impoverishes the knowledge base. Academics, administrators, and the broader public should think long and hard about whether scholarship suppression is a fundamentally desirable or undesirable feature of the quest for knowledge.

**Author Contributions:** Conceptualization, S.T.S. and L.J.; writing—original draft preparation, S.T.S., L.J., and N.H.; writing—review and editing, L.J., N.H., and S.T.S.; project administration, L.J. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

**Funding:** This research obtained no external funding.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The authors declare no conflict of interest.
