WHEN ACADEMICS LIE AND SMEAR: Nancy MacLean’s Distortion of James Buchanan’s Statement. “My Econlib colleague Russ Roberts has pointed to a passage of Nancy MacLean’s recent book, Democracy in Chains: A Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America, in which Professor MacLean left key words out of a quote from Tyler Cowen, thus seriously distorting his meaning. A Facebook friend, Christopher Fleming, has pointed out that she has done the same thing with a quote from James Buchanan, the main player in her book. See if you can tell the difference between what he says and what she claims he says.”

This sort of thing is academic misconduct on a par with plagiarism, but anything for “social justice” I guess. Two lessons here: (1) If you can’t criticize people on the right without lying about them, maybe you just can’t criticize them; and (2) This is why academic institutions shouldn’t hire people who prioritize “social justice.”