This same line of argument has been taken up by several conservative essayists, notably National Review's Stanley Kurtz, in the weeks after September 11. It's too bad that professors like Berthold have been disciplined or intimidated, they say--but didn't the academic left set the stage for this kind of thing by promoting misguided and repressive antiharassment policies?

"I don't accept that notion at all," says Barbara Bowen, the president of the Professional Staff Congress, the faculty union of the City University of New York. "I don't accept that the left has created a climate of intolerance by vigorously denouncing racist speech. Racism is something that should be denounced each and every time it's encountered." Bowen's union has been the object of intense criticism in the wake of an early October teach-in at which leftist CUNY professors discussed US foreign policy. ("Once-Proud Campus Now a Breeding Ground for Idiots," ran one headline in the New York Post, whose editors declared that they were rethinking their support for increased CUNY funding because of the teach-in.) In fact, says Bowen, the controversy over the CUNY teach-in has been heavily conditioned by racial and class injustice. "NYU, Columbia, Princeton--every other school in the area has had similar teach-ins, and there hasn't been this vitriolic criticism. Our students are working class, immigrants, people of color, and there's this idea out there that they have less right than elite students to be exposed to a wide range of opinions."

Bowen is surely right to say that "vigorously denouncing racism"--and interrogating its role in education policy--is an important responsibility. But it's hard to escape the suspicion that Stanley Kurtz is on to something. The last generation's wave of campus speech codes and antiharassment policies may have done more to suppress freedom than to remedy injustice in any meaningful way--and it may be only now, after September 11, that the full costs will become apparent.

Consider the case of Jonnie Hargis, a library assistant at UCLA. On September 12 one of Hargis's colleagues sent around a gooey e-mail sermon titled "America: The Good Neighbor." Hargis replied with a message of his own: "This is all well and good but avoids the fact that U.S. taxpayers fund and arm an apartheid state called Israel...the U.S. is still bombing Iraq...so, who are the 'terrorists' anyway?"

Two days later, UCLA suspended Hargis for one week without pay. The charge? Not that Hargis was seditious; nor that he had violated the alleged political neutrality of the university. Those were the rationales for repression in bygone years. Instead, Hargis was charged with "contribut[ing] to a hostile and threatening environment" for his colleagues who have "ethnic, religious, and family ties to Israel." Hargis's e-mail hadn't mentioned any of his library colleagues; it simply spelled out his hard-left views of US foreign policy. It's not hard to imagine the many crucial arguments that might be suppressed with the use of UCLA's logic. Could secular feminist speakers be accused of creating a "hostile environment" for traditionalist Muslims? Could antiwar faculty be accused of creating a "hostile environment" for ROTC members on campus? (Actually, this last argument has been wheeled out this season by conservatives.)

"The original patriotic e-mail didn't offend me," says Hargis. "I just took it as an invitation to discuss. And then two days later I walk in and I'm suspended." As was the case at UNC, this story has a decent ending: Through his union, the Coalition of University Employees, Hargis has successfully pursued a grievance. He will be repaid for his lost income, the incident will be stricken from his job record and the university has been forced to issue a clarification of its e-mail policies. But it's hard to imagine that the incident has not had at least a small chilling effect on campus dialogue.

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