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The Campus Anti-Fascist Network is a new coalition of faculty, staff, and students who want to push back against far-right speakers and websites that call out their peers for perceived liberal bias.
Rallies for far-right speakers, misrepresentation of professors’ statements, and racist or Islamophobic signs are popping up on campuses across the country. Some faculty members think that trend is more than just a conservative backlash against perceived liberal bias; it’s fascism.
In an effort to push back, Bill Mullen, an English professor at Purdue University, last spring formed a coalition of scholars called the Campus Anti-Fascist Network. Since a white-supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va., that started on the University of Virginia’s campus turned deadly in August, Mr. Mullen said the network had grown from 40 to 400 members. including faculty, staff, and students.
"This is a very, very bad turn in higher education," Mr. Mullen said. "We invite people from diverse political perspectives to join this network as long as they oppose fascism."
He and David Palumbo-Liu, a comparative-literature professor at Stanford University, formed the network after seeing academics such as Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, an assistant professor of African-American studies at Princeton University, and Johnny E. Williams, a sociology professor at Trinity College, in Connecticut, face death threats in response to comments that some found controversial.
The Campus Anti-Fascist Network, Mr. Mullen said, is meant to support academics in that position, especially when their administrations hold them at arm’s length.
"We will defend the targets and victims of fascism, defend Muslims, immigrants, Jews, and LGBTQ...