C is for clampdown

Who is the most powerful woman in America? It's a toss-up between Condoleezza Rice and Lynne V Cheney. One (the national security adviser) works behind the scenes. The other (Mrs Vice-President) is the administration's junkyard bitch. Immediately after the September outrage, Cheney went into attack mode. Bush and his advisers have taken to heart the lesson of the Vietnam defeat: if you make war overseas, neutralise the campus enemy at home first.
When, with Clinton's victory, she was ousted from her position as tyrannical chair of the National Endowment of the Humanities, Cheney founded the American Council of Trustees and Academics. Acta exists to deplore, oppose and undermine the incorrigibly liberal tendency of American higher education. Two months after 9/11 her council issued a rabid tract: "Defending Civilisation: How our Universities are Failing America and What Can Be Done About It". What could be done was to name names: 40 professors - including the president of Wellesley College - were anathematised.