The president of George Washington University has walked back his condemnation of posters critical of the Chinese Communist Party. But his instinct to lash out at the activists responsible for the posters the moment students cried racism is a failure of leadership and an indictment of the current state of higher education.

University President Mark Wrighton initially claimed that he was “personally offended” by the posters he now admits he knew nothing about. He promised to have the “offensive posters” removed “as soon as possible” and said that he, too, was “saddened by this terrible event.”