Mark Bauerlein delivers a solid riposte to “Reclaim Your Rights as a Liberal Educator,” an essay by Julie Kilmer, a women’s studies professor at Olivet College. Kilmer is in a snit about conservative student activists who, she frets, are spying in her classroom and poised to report on her to the campus leadership.

Bauerlein has a field day analyzing the unhinged mindset of such professors, who “so exaggerate the power of students, assume the role of victim, and concoct scenarios of interrogation without offering the slightest factual evidence or acknowledging the special protections of professorial life.” What a pack of hothouse flowers these professors – they who have “nursed resentments for many years within the artificial havens of one-party departments, tenure, and a 30-week work year.” In the minds of such professors, students who resist their pet theories are suspect and treacherous. This mindset pervades the academy:An ideology has become a measure of responsibility. A partisan belief is professional etiquette. A controversial outlook is an academic norm. Political bias suffuses the principles of scattered disciplines. Advocacy stands as normal and proper pedagogy. That’s the sleight-of-hand, and it activates in far too many decisions in curriculum, grading, hiring, and promotion.