An example of using social fear to intimidate students who might ask the “wrong questions.” From a review of Rebecca Goldstein’s Betraying Spinoza:
Goldstein tells of “the particularly Jewish way in which Spinoza entered her life. It initially happened, she tells us, in a yeshiva high school for girls. Her favorite teacher, Mrs. Schoenfeld, 
told the girls the story of Spinoza as ‘a cautionary tale of unbridled human intelligence blindly seeking its own doom.’ ‘He was a brilliant student,’ Mrs. Schoenfeld told them, ‘a boy born with blessings. His very name, of course, means blessed in the holy tongue. Yet this misguided young man … who might have used his superior mind to increase our knowledge of the Torah, had died with the pagan name of Benedictus, excommunicated and cursed by his own people, condemned and reviled even by believing Christians. Let the history of the philosopher Spinoza serve as a warning to you, girls, of the dangers of asking the wrong questions.'”
Source: Hilary Putnam, review of Betraying Spinoza: The Renegade Jew Who Gave Us Modernity, by Rebecca Goldstein; p. 25 in the June 18, 2006 The New York Observer.
If Spinoza had not asked the “wrong questions” and gotten himself ex-communicated, nobody would know about him today, except perhaps students of 17th century Jewish rabbinical lore (assuming he became a rabbi and produced some surviving writings).
Whether what happened to Spinoza is a “cautionary tale” depends on what a person values in life, and beyond his own life. The difference between the fear of asking the “wrong questions” at the yeshiva, for example, and the fear of asking the “wrong questions” at a university, is that the yeshiva teacher is trying to keep the students within a multi-generational community of faith that has given meaning to millions of lives over the centuries. At the university, on the other hand, the penalty for asking the “wrong question” – which is exactly what used to be understood as the purpose of the university – is having your career prospects damaged, and perhaps losing some fair-weather friends.
“This ridiculous man who might have consolidated our beliefs chose instead to challenge them – and met the fate he so richly deserved. We must learn to temper our human intelligence with conclusions revealed by accepted authorities, while ever keenly cognizant of the wisdom of majority.”
“A foolish idea that is believed by millions is still a foolish idea.”
– A bad Chinese person