The institution of the university is at the heart of the culture wars raging in contemporary American society. The multifarious ideological and cultural antagonisms within U.S. culture are often discussed in terms that originated in academic debates on the political implications of canons, curricula and faculty structures before finding their way into broader public discourse: ‘Cancel culture’, ‘wokeness’, ‘political correctness’, ‘de-platforming’, ‘identity politics’, ‘cultural Marxism’ or ‘critical race studies’ have become buzzwords in an increasingly entrenched controversy in which one side claims that basic democratic values such as academic freedom and freedom of speech are under attack, while the other side views the current shifts as a long overdue abolition of the unchecked hegemony of white, male and heteronormative privilege and power.