A “Pagan Pride” festival, which recently took place at State University of New York-Adirondack Community College, gave top billing to John Allee, a Satanic priest and founder of the First Church of Satan. The latter’s website, as noted by the Catholic League, features videos that mock Jesus and nuns, often in terms so obscene as to be unfit for print in the mainstream media.

The Washington Times reports that a University of Virginia student newspaper ran cartoons grossly ridiculing Jesus, the Virgin Mary and Joseph.

On the SUNY event I commented in The New York Sun that “standards for campus activities cannot sink much lower into the slime.” On second thought, it is more accurate to say that such standards no longer exist.

Blasphemous anti-Christian and similar displays are now common on American campuses. Many students and professors worship at the altar of unbridled freedom of speech and expression – the product of the unbridled self – and they reflexively reject considerations of what is right, reasonable, honorable and tasteful. Instead, on some campuses there appears to be a race on to see who or which organizations can stage the most debased, sordid and hurtful events.

I too reject censorship but with the following caveat so well articulated by Richard John Neuhaus, a Catholic priest and leading intellectual:

I am in favor of censorship, with it being understood that the best form of censorship is self-censorship, which is simply another way of saying self-control…In the Christian understanding, the protection of freedom is integral to respect for the dignity of the human person, also when the person abuses that freedom (First Things, April 2006, p.72).

There is a great deal faculty and administrators can do to elevate the level of campus discourse, as opposed to mouthing the usual nostrums and disclaimers. At SUNY these included proclaiming the college’s lack of “legal authority to control any student-sponsored activities” and its “strong policy to encourage the celebration of cultural diversity” (college statement, September 29). At U.Va a college spokeswoman evoked the institution’s lack of editorial control over the newspaper and its obligation to uphold freedoms of speech and expression (see The Washington Times).

University leaders can start by openly and forcefully criticizing debased campus activities. The academy should reject the current system of mandated student funding, which often forces students to support campus events against their will. Responsible faculty members should review campus events and help to guide students toward sponsoring activities that contribute positively to the intellectual, moral and social life of the institution; contrary to the prevailing view, such guidance was traditionally viewed to be part of the duties of the professoriate. Faculty and administrators should also instill in curricula, where appropriate, the study of traditional ethics. And, yes, students need also be taught that religion has contributed much of inestimable value to Western civilization.