Academia is full of people who think the United States is a totalitarian dictatorship and will tell you so any chance they get. Of course, the fact that they can say it so loudly and not end up in a gulag is a pretty good indicator that they’re wrong, but they persist.
However, while saying such about the United States, they typically like to turn their universities into microcosms of the very thing they claim they’re fighting against.
For example, they like to punish students for gun-related free speech issues. That’s what Fordham University did to a Chinese immigrant who posed with a firearm in a photograph. Now, the student’s attorneys allege the university has ties to the very epitome of totalitarianism.