You know, Dawkins dumped at Berkeley and all that. From Elliot Kaufman at National Review:
Why must ardent secularists from the Islamic world like Ayaan Hirsi Ali — the type of people the Left looks to for inspiration in the history of Western secularism — be deemed bigots, while Sharia-supporting conspiracy theorists like Linda Sarsour are cherished? Why has criticizing Islam caused the New Atheists to cross a red line in the progressive imagination?
These positions make no sense if one thinks of the Left as seriously secular, convinced of the need to end the reign of superstition. But American liberals profess neither the passionate skepticism of David Hume nor the honest, urgent atheism of Nietzsche. They prefer to embrace a shallow, culture-war atheism instead.
This culture-war atheism provides “evidence,” quick and easy, to support the proposition that America is split into two camps: the intelligent, sophisticated, urbane, righteous liberals and the idiotic, gullible, backward, bigoted conservatives. The former are atheists and the latter are believers, flattering one side and bludgeoning the other. In fact, it is this type of thinking that made progressives fall in love with the New Atheists in the first place.
More.
Maybe the progressives wanted a sciencey flounce but not the late nights at the lab? And the Darwinian left wanted the jihad without the suicide?
We don’t know if any of them have got what they wanted but we have all got the reality now.
See also: Dawkins dumped from Berkeley due to “hurtful words”
and
Dawkins haunted by the ghost of (ulp!) Ben Stein