"...we shouldn't ignore the fact that university faculties increasingly consist of adjunct professors, most of whom will never get tenure. That is something that is likely to discourage most people from taking outspoken political positions..."
Oh, I don't know, it doesn't seem to me that tenure was what gave them courage. I think rather it was the spirit of the times and the prospect of being drafted and the actual social revolution that was bubbling all over the place.
I have never thought that academia was on the cutting edge of anything. The owl of Minerva flies at dusk, etc. And my own experience of academics when I was there was that for the most part they were the most ordinary of cowards. I was fascinated by the "moderatism" thing though. That one miscarriage of English seemed to say so much about the logic of a position that doesn't particularly want to get anywhere.
Joanna