Unfortunately, I think you are correct. If I had to pick a time when this became obvious to me it was between one and two decades ago when both university establishments and students started ostracizing and even removing lecturers and professors from their positions for their political or unorthodox views.

When I was at university which was quite some decades before that time it was almost the norm for students to have different political and social views to many of the teaching staff - for that was one of the unstated parts of a student's development.

However, these differences never descended into the depths of personal animosity that we're seeing today. Instead, constant tension been youthful student culture and establishment norms resulted in a cross fertilization of ideas and it formed a substantial part of how students developed into mature individuals. Traditionally, one of the most valuable aspects of students' lives was that they were constantly saturated with many differing and challenging ideas that were outside their core curricula. Debates often followed that further forced students to think in rigorous ways if for no other reason than one had to analyze the diversity of ideas to arrive at a sensible or logical conclusion.

(I'd go as far as saying that what I learned outside the curriculum largely formed me into the person I am today, especially so my worldview, for without this constant interaction with others that view would now be much narrower.)

Back then, it would have been almost unthinkable that teaching staff would have been dismissed for having or stating political or unorthodox views, as there was a well accepted and longstanding understanding that a university was a place where ideas had 'universality' - hence the very term university. Universities were places where we not only cultivated both traditional and new ideas but also where we examined them and argued over their importance. Arguing over ideas honed one's cognitive ability and thus was encouraged. These days, if one puts an 'alterative' view or one that's deemed unacceptable to mention - even if mentioned in quotes or just as a hypothetical - then one is suspect or automatically comes under suspicion and is thus subject to criticism and attack even to the extent that one's career can be seriously damaged or put into jeopardy. Again, once not that many decades ago such unacceptable behavior was almost unheard of.

Nevertheless, universities are just a microcosm of the broader culture and the breakdown in their culture and social fabric that we're now seeing is also occurring across society at large. Nowadays we're witnessing not only a loss of tolerance for alternative views and ideas but also that this intolerance often develops into outright hostility towards those who entertain or espouse alternative ideas even if they deviate only marginally from the accepted orthodoxy. It's as if we're entering an age not unlike those nasty times of heightened religious sectarianism where each orthodoxy was utterly immutable and set in stone.

One doesn't have to be a genius to realize that if one doesn't want to be on the receiving end of hostilities then one should keep one's views to oneself. No further extrapolation is needed to see that such pressures lead to an overall narrowing of ideas together with a reduction in their diversity.

What I've learned from this is how quickly things can go bad or change for the worse. That the Enlightenment took over from the Middle Ages and that it led to the betterment of millions of lives over the next few centuries is no guarantee that humankind will continue to improve this way into the future.

Intolerance towards alternative ideas and lack of concern for facts and the truth ought to be a wake-up call to every thinking individual. That said, what I remain most perplexed about is why philosophers and the best thinkers of our time remain so mute about these issues especially so the reasons for why we arrived in this deplorable situation at all. It seems to me they should be shouting loudly about them at every possible opportunity.