Although prominent national leaders are beginning generally to address the need to balance freedom of speech and terrorism, few among them as yet speak out specifically about the need to strike such a balance on the nation’s campuses.

For example, in a compelling recent speech former House speaker Newt Gingrich stated [bolding mine throughout]

We now should be impaneling people to look seriously at a level of supervision that we would never dream of if it weren’t for the scale of the threat. This is a serious, long-term war…Either before we lose a city or, if we are truly stupid, after we lose a city, we will adopt rules of engagement that use every technology we can find to break up their capacity to use the Internet, to break up [terrorists’] capacity to use free speech, and to go after people who want to kill us to stop them from recruiting people.We should propose a Geneva Convention for fighting terrorism, which makes very clear that those who would fight outside the rules of law, those who would use weapons of mass destruction, and those who would target civilians are, in fact, subject to a totally different set of rules that allow us to protect civilization by defeating barbarism before it gains so much strength that it is truly horrendous.

Although Gingrich did not relate his call for a new “level of supervision” and “set of rules” to the university, he would likely agree with those among us (myself included) who contend that Islamic radicalization on campuses can play into the hands of jihadists who would do us harm and, indeed, that there is documentation of the direct use of campuses by jihadists to further their lethal aims.

Gingrich’s exhortation to prevent terrorists from using the Internet and recruiting persons into their ranks resonates with the warnings of counterterrorist expert Anthony Glees regarding the infiltration of British campuses by terrorism. Writing recently in The Wall Street Journal, Glees said:

I believe a significant number get radicalized and recruited on university campuses. At least 13 convicted Islamist terrorists and four suicide bombers have been students at British universities. Radical Islamist student societies make full use of university resources. They operate Web sites, hosted by university servers, which direct visitors to organizations that glorify jihad and terror. These “religious” groups are given “prayer rooms” on campus, which are also used to disseminate extremist literature and DVDs. Muslim students concerned about these developments tell me that at many of these Islamic societies terrorism is portrayed as justified acts of “resistance.” A leading imam in Birmingham often preaches on British campuses that the London bombers have to be seen as “martyrs.”

Gingrich serves us well by pressing the need for vigilance regarding how our civil liberties may be used against us by our enemies. As Glees tirelessly points out, Western universities are a key area in which we must exert such vigilance.

Civilized nations must create a broad culture of security. Integral to it must be a culture of security on campuses.