[2] His father, Robert Johnson, was a star basketball player at Fitchburg State College, leading the nation in scoring at 39.1 points per game in 1964.

"[12] Colleagues began to criticize him, some of them arguing that his intense involvement in his work was, in Rabinowitz's words, "a sign of dubious mental health", and at least one of them complaining that "Johnson was asking too much of his students.

When Johnson sat on a search committee charged with finding an expert in 20th-century central or eastern European studies, he decided that one of the two women on the short list was unqualified.

"[12] In response, a group of 20 historians, spearheaded by the chairman of Harvard's history department, Akira Iriye (who had been Johnson's mentor and dissertation adviser),[14] wrote a letter declaring that the tenure denial "reflects a 'culture of mediocrity' hostile to high academic standards...

Such thinking, the professors wrote, "poses a grave threat to academic freedom, since the robust and unfettered exchange of ideas is central to the pursuit of truth.

"[13] The Brooklyn College student government voted unanimously in support of Johnson, describing the refusal to grant tenure as a "violation of their academic rights".

The student government also noted that "the college's conduct of the KC Johnson tenure case was described by retired Brooklyn professor and longtime PSC grievance counselor Jerome Sternstein as 'the most corrupted tenure review process I have ever come across'; University of Pennsylvania professor Erin O’Connor described it as 'an exemplary instance of the sort of petty, internecine corruption that runs rife in academe, where accountability is minimal and the power to destroy careers is correspondingly high'; and Swarthmore College professor Timothy Burke described it as 'one more arrow in the quiver of academia's critics, one more revelation of the corruption of the profession as a whole, one more reason to question whether tenure ever serves the purpose for which it is allegedly designed'.

He found that while his students appreciated and applauded his work and his commitment, the left-wing professoriate now dominant in the academy could not tolerate his insistence on quality standards in hiring, his dismissal of politically correct criteria, and his non-ideological approach to his field.

"[19] And Herbert London of the conservative Hudson Institute saw Johnson's tenure case as exemplifying the emergence in American universities of "an orthodoxy of decidedly left-wing opinion that intolerantly rejects any other point of view....it is ironic that tenure conceived as a way to insure independent thought free from censure is now employed to enforce conformity.

Johnson holds critical views of some of Duke's faculty and staff, known as the Group of 88, and referred to them as a "rush-to-judgment mob"[27] who had published an ad condemning players and encouraging protests against the falsely accused, much before the investigations had been concluded.

One of the accused, Reade Seligmann, thanked Johnson publicly, stating: "I am forever grateful for all of the care, concern, and encouragement I received from my remarkable girlfriend Brooke and her family, the Delbarton community, the town of Essex Fells, KC Johnson, and everyone else who chose to stand up, use their voice, and challenge the actions of a rogue district attorney.

[31] Johnson would go on to join Stuart Taylor, Jr. in co-writing the book Until Proven Innocent: Political Correctness and the Shameful Injustice of the Duke Lacrosse Case (ISBN 0-312-36912-3).

"[32] James Earl Coleman, Jr. and Prasad Kasibhatla, Duke professors, criticized Taylor and Johnson for "biased and inaccurate rhetoric".