Bradford Vivian argues that the popular understanding of free speech on college campuses is the result of an organized misinformation campaign of the sort that has become endemic in American politics. As in other areas, classic methods of authoritarian control by the manipulation of public opinion have been put to work in pursuit of an agenda, in this case a right wing effort by conservatives to take control of American universities. The purpose of the misinformation campaign is to create a public panic that will be used to legitimatize the abandonment of academic freedom and the suppression of democratic expression on campuses, precisely the things the purveyors of misinformation claim—in fine Orwellian fashion—to want to “restore.”

Vivian summarizes the well-known (and heavily marketed) standard narrative like this: “Undergraduate students today are badly coddled. The smallest obstacles and disagreements trigger them. Students desire safe spaces and constant reassurance. . . . The culture of most college campuses now repress free speech, diverse viewpoints, and constructive disagreement. That culture threatens not only higher education but democracy writ large” (2). In Vivian's view, these claims are not merely wrong, they are fundamentally dishonest, the result, as the book’s title says, of a campaign of misinfor