The Chronicle of Higher Ed describes Columbia U. president Lee Bollinger as a “committed free-speech advocate.” In the late 1980s and early 1990s, when I was a student at the University of Michigan and Bollinger was dean of the law school, it sure would have been nice to have had some of Bollinger’s committed advocacy in the fight against the administration’s speech code. Alas, Bollinger was virtually silent. Jeff Jacoby of the Boston Globe wrote the definitive column on it here.

Two decades ago, we sure could have used an organization such as FIRE. Today, thankfully, it exists. President Greg Lukianoff discusses the latest threats to campus speech here:

A recent dramatic example of the silencing of basic dissent happened at Bucknell, where students were not allowed to protest the stimulus plan by handing out obviously fake “Obama stimulus dollars.” Bucknell has steadfastly refused to back down from this absurd decision. Bucknell’s effort to censor discussion of the stimulus bill is stunning not only because the stimulus has been criticized by practically everybody, but most importantly because it demonstrates how difficult it is to have a meaningful discussion when students can actually get in trouble for taking the “wrong side” of an issue. As long as speech codes mandate that campus judiciaries investigate clearly protected speech, and “offensive” arguments can be and are censored on campus, the difficult process of learning through debate and discussion cannot properly take place. Without robust debate and discussion, we can only expect the national level of discourse to–in the best case–stay the same, or worse, become even more polarized.