Free speech for me but not for thee

American universities pay lip service to multiculturalism and inclusiveness, but one of their despicable secrets is that, while conservative and Jewish speakers are ignored or shouted down with no push-back whatsoever from the university administrations, pro-Palestinian speakers are given a bully pulpit.  The worse their rhetoric — the more anti-inflammatory and antisemitic — the more aggressively the university administrations go the mat for them to defend their right to free speech.  One of the best and most diligent chroniclers of this trend is Bruce Kesler, who blogs at Maggie’s Farm.

Kesler has now turned the spotlight on Cal State University, Northridge, where David Klein, a math professor has a university sanctioned webpage devoted, not to math, but to demonizing Israel in terms that would have made Goebbels, Eichmann, and the whole gang proud.  The good professor, you see, is exercising his “right to free speech.”

Back in the day, I naively understood professorial free speech to mean that, within the context of teaching the subject matter for which he was hired, a professor could not be coerced into limiting his teaching to state/employer mandated doctrine.  To do so would destroy an academic institution’s ability to introduce students to new ideas and new ways of thinking.  Foolish me.  I didn’t understand that academic free speech means that tax payer funded universities are open forums for one thing and one thing only:  the most radical Left ideology on any subject known to man.