So scientists shouldn't be allowed to hold their own political opinions, or organizational leaders shouldn't be allowed to exercise some autonomy with regards to the culture they foster, or educated people shouldn't tend to favor the political tribe that focuses on constructive solutions, or what? What is your specific critique here?

Whatever it might be, it seems like we could have instituted a targeted reform for that specific problem rather than self-immolating our educational institutions and continuing to hand the reigns of world leadership to China.

They're not self-immolating.

They're being torched down.

It's a solution. No other solution has worked, or been proposed.

Remember Brendan Eich? He was excommunicated because of a personal political view, allegedly because "he lost trust of the community". So yeah, being right-wing is faux-pass in tech and academia, therefore the left has no argument against people being defunded / fired because of personal political opinions. But we're talking here (see my other post) is institutional far-left policy (DEI meaning explicit racism and sexism against white men). No wonder they have totally lost trust of the community (like half the US), to be seemingly beyond reform, up for restarting from scratch.