A battle cry for freedom … on college campuses

The least disturbing of the three stories is in itself tremendously troubling. The mega-distinguished Harvard professor Harvey Mansfield, who had been invited to give a commencement address at Concordia University in Canada, was then disinvited by its president because, reportedly, some alumni and faculty allege that Mansfield “traffics in damaging and discredited philosophies of gender and culture.”

Mansfield’s sin — one that also got him heckled this month at Beloit College — was in writing a book called Manliness, published back in 2006, which insists there are innate differences between men and women while lamenting the modern habit of treating masculine qualities as vices.

Mansfield was, of course, correct. To deny the difference between men and women is to deny physiology and a raft of additional science. But in the ideological fairyland of leftist academia, nature itself must surrender to the cause of providing safe space for eggshell-fragile wokeness. By the lights of leftist Lilliputians, this only makes sense: Already feeling threatened by dead white males, they obviously suffer even more sheer terror from the words of a live 86-year-old.

The second story is still worse. UCLA professor Judea Pearl, father of the late journalist Daniel Pearl, who had received the Distinguished Alumnus Award from New York University, rightly felt impelled to renounce his award in protest against NYU’s latest foray into trendy anti-Semitism.

Daniel Pearl was the Wall Street Journal reporter beheaded by Islamic terrorists on video for the sin of being Jewish. Judea Pearl is aghast that NYU recently gave the President’s Service Award to the school’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine — a radical group whose members reportedly have intimidated and assaulted speakers, burned Israeli flags, pushed for boycotting Israel, and blacklisted Jewish-related groups, including the widely respected Anti-Defamation League.

Yet somehow, NYU feels fit to honor the Students for Justice for supposedly “extraordinary and positive impact on the University community.” Professor Pearl is right that this is vile. To honor a group that would deny the free speech of others is to turn on their heads both free academic inquiry and basic morality.

At least one college, the University of Chicago, handled similar disruptions appropriately, although it took its sweet time. Earlier this month, George Mason University law professor Eugene Kontorovich was heckled while speaking at the Chicago school on First Amendment issues related to the movement, which he opposes, to boycott and divest from Israel. The pro-Palestinian protesters successfully drowned out and forced temporary stoppage of Kontorovich’s speech until finally they were belatedly arrested.

These assaults against the free exchange of ideas are, of course, common these days on college campuses. They cannot be allowed to continue. Academia’s embrace of speech codes, suppression of nonconforming thought, and allowance of hooliganism must somehow be “resisted, rejected … defeated,” and punished.

But how?

The question isn’t merely rhetorical. Congressional resolutions, careful presidential orders, and narrowly focused Senate investigations can, and should, go only so far. Even when government is trying to protect free speech, its policing of the situation is problematic because mission creep could lead to government favoring some kinds of speech more than others.

Perhaps what’s needed is massive resistance. Perhaps parents nationwide should refuse to pay to send their children to any college with a “speech code.” Alumni should withhold donations to universities that disfavor free expression and inquiry until their policies change. Maybe an organization should form to coordinate and publicize these efforts.

One way or another, though, it’s time for battle, by all legal means necessary. The thought-totalitarianism on campus must end.