Columbia University has issued a pitiful slap on the wrist to a few of the students who disrupted and silenced a talk by Minuteman spokesman, Jim Gilchrist. John Miller has the details in a couple of posts over at Phi Beta Cons. I’m not the only one calling this a “slap on the wrist.” The Chronicle of Higher Education and Inside Higher Ed are playing it about the same way. This decision will do precious little to protect free speech on America’s college campuses, and may even make things worse. Now students can feel that the worst that will happen to them, even for violent disruptions of speech, is free publicity and a national platform to cry “discrimination” based on meaningless penalties. Here’s one of the “punished” students bragging and bleating now in the Columbia Spectator.