Shirley Tilghman, president of Princeton University, was asked to comment on the need for campuses to adopt an “academic bill of rights” that would help to ensure that other than liberal views are heard on campuses.

Joining the lockstep phalanx of other university presidents as well as the leaders of faculty organizations and unions recently denying the problem of stifling political correctness on campuses, Tilghman responded that she has “never in five years had a student in [her] office complaining about this issue.”

Of course students are in numerous ways discouraged from voicing their complaints and, sadly, many are already so indoctrinated as not to be able to tell the difference between balanced and unbalanced viewpoints. In addition, their complaints are typically buried down the chain of command (at the classroom, departmental level, etc.) and are not likely to surface in the offices of presidents, who in any case go out of their way not to gather information about and address them–for fear of tangling with campus ideologues. Moreover, an open-minded and courageous president would not toe the party line by implying that the evidence for campus political bias consists only in registered student complaints, when multiple categories of evidence–program statements, faculty syllabi and research, multiple case studies, the politicized nature of campus events, etc.–overwhelmingly reflect one-sidedness.

But Tilghman’s conformist response is especially disingenuous–and contemptuous of students. She willfully ignores that the Princeton student body recently found reason to endorse a statement similar to (David Horowitz’s) academic bill of rights, thus going on record loud and clear that it believes intellectual diversity is stymied at the university. Tilghman is simply turning her back on the students’ plea for change.

The Wall Street Journal article that cites her comments is titled “The Tiger Roars.” More aptly it should be called “Tilghman Squeaks.”