Don Herzog has a very good post about academic freedom and viewpoint diversity in the classroom over at Left2Right. A taste:
Are students entitled to classrooms or campuses where they won’t be offended? No way. That’s a recipe for turning vibrant free speech into mindless pablum, given how many people have exquisite sensibilities on tons of issues. Not that you need exquisite sensibilities to take exception to some things that get said. There have been some grievous episodes of hate speech on campuses. But every speech code I’ve ever seen, including the one from Michigan struck down in ’89, is impossibly hamhanded. Probably the best bet is to give up on such formal codes and sanctions, not on the Looney-Tunes view that free speech means anyone can say anything however and whenever he likes, but because we can’t trust the authorities to make sensible decisions. There are horror stories too about what jittery and spineless university administrators will do to protect students’ sensibilities: it was ludicrous to shut this down.
UPDATE: While you’re at it, check out the interesting defense of tenure in the comment section.
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