Like so many other universities, Duke has been plagued by protests that aim to stifle freedom of expression. Yesterday, a group of students published an open letter to university president Richard Brodhead. The students lament that the intellectual climate on campus “values identity politics over reasoned discussion.” They note, inter alia, that members of the Duke Students Executive Board try to intimidate first-year members into affirming their allegiance to politically correct ideas and that the protesters have demanded a vague definition of “hate speech” along with an institutional apparatus for monitoring faculty and student statements for any sign of that.

They wouldn’t know or care that Stalin had a similar apparatus for detecting communications that were to him “hate speech.” It was a critical letter written in 1944 that landed an artillery office named Alexander Solzhenitsyn in the Gulag.

Good luck to the Duke Open Campus Coalition. The students have shown intellectual bravery in opposing the bullies who want to silence or punish those who dare disagree with them.