Glenn “Instapundit” Reynolds has a recipe for fighting back against the woke cancel mob: “Never apologize, rally your friends, punch back harder“.

And it’s a good one:

This is what’s going on with the University of San Diego Law School, whose dean shamefully capitulated to an absurd student campaign against a professor who did nothing wrong. In a post on his personal blog, Professor Thomas Smith said that those who dismiss the possibility that the Wuhan coronavirus escaped from a lab there were “swallowing whole a set of Chinese” — and here he used an scatological phrase meaning, in effect, “balderdash.”

He was, of course, referring to the Chinese regime’s denials, which are facing growing scientific skepticism.

Asian students complained — preposterously — that this was somehow a racist slur against Chinese people, rather than a criticism of the brutal Communist regime. Rather than telling them that, as law students, they needed to work on their reading skills, Dean Robert Schapiro issued a craven response, suggesting that there was some basis to the complaints. In an e-mail to the law-school community, he charged Smith with “bias” and with using “offensive” language and announced an investigation.

But here’s where the story changes. Some of the most eminent faculty members at the law school — including such big names as Larry Alexander, Maimon Schwarzschild, Steve Smith, Chris Wonnell and Gail Heriot — fired back at Schapiro. They wrote: “We are concerned that treating these complaints the way you are doing validates student reactions and strained interpretations that are misguided, that reflect a lack of critical thinking and that will chill faculty members’ teaching and scholarship.”

The one problem – it depends on having friends to rally.

Oddly enough, in academia – which has become a “woke” gulag in the past few decades – conservatives may be better placed to fight back. As lopsided as things are in academia, there is at least a tradition of academic freedom to uphold, and groups like FIRE, with money and lawyers, to help do it.

But if you’re at a company that’s become infested with Wokies? Getting pressure to just shut up? Seeing dissenting thought shouted down around the water cooler? Seeing management starting to buckle?

Normals need to start organizing in the real world.

More on this tomorrow.