To restore free expression and the unfettered exchange of ideas to censorious college campuses, the nation’s liberal thought leaders will have to admit we have a problem on our hands. Events of this week presented some encouraging signs that they’re getting closer. While restless campuses erupted in sadly predictable episodes of students demanding administrators acquiesce to their demands, institutions of the center-left establishment showed a growing willingness to confront the demons now endemic to the bright college years.

For one thing, the American Civil Liberties Union—not always exactly an equal opportunity watchdog—condemned the University of California’s submission to a “heckler’s veto” at Berkeley, where Ann Coulter’s on-again-off-again speaking engagement sparked viral debate across the political spectrum. (Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren also spoke out against the effort to shut down Coulter.) Shouting down a politically unpopular speaker is an established trend that’s reached new heights recent months. It’s a symptom of “carving out” freedom of expression from the first amendment, the result of a failure to teach civics and compounded by the college-aged generation’s early exposure to social media. Or so argues Jeffrey Herbst, the president of the reliably left-leaning Newseum, whose timely white paper “Addressing the Real Crisis of Free Expression on Campus” published this week: