Colleges value civility over free expression

Page 2 of 2 -- Demonstrating yet again that on today's campuses the distance from mildly provocative statement to absurd overreaction is a short step indeed, MIT biologist Nancy Hopkins told the Globe that she had to leave the room for fear she would have ''blacked out or thrown up'' if she stayed.

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Now Summers, as university president, obviously won't be punished for what he said - though the National Organization for Women made itself look ridiculous by calling for his resignation - but he certainly appears to have been neutered as a freethinker. He has now issued apologies almost beyond enumeration for offending against the prevailing orthodoxy.

Watching the uproar that ensued, one could only imagine the plight of a mere student who had broached an opinion that contravened the dogma of the academic majority.

''They talk in terms of diversity and multiculturalism, but they are incredibly intolerant of real diversity,'' says Harvey Silverglate, Boston's doughty crusader for real academic freedom and FIRE's co-founder. ''They want a campus where everyone looks different, but thinks the same.''

Silverglate, whose organization has helped reveal the academy's insidious encroachment on free speech, estimates that 85 to 90 percent of American colleges and universities have some sort of speech code. They aren't called that, of course; that would be too blatant.

Instead, they usually masquerade as anti-harassment rules. ''But when you classify harassment as anything that disturbs anybody else, you have a speech code, just by another name,'' Silverglate observes.

Still, it can be hard for the uninitiated to detect a speech code - and harder still for a student or faculty member caught up in an Orwellian disciplinary process to fight it.

That's where FIRE comes into play. The nonprofit foundation that Silverglate and others started several years ago has just published a superb new book, ''FIRE's Guide to Free Speech on Campus.''

Written by Silverglate, French, and Greg Lukianoff, the foundation's director of public and legal advocacy, the guide offers an informative historical overview of the right of free speech, the many aspects of expression, the various relevant court decisions, and what they mean.

It's a first-rate primer, one that every college administrator and professor should take time to read.

They won't, of course. And that's why the second section is so valuable.

There, the authors step smartly through the different ways colleges and universities have gone about suppressing speech, using examples drawn from the battles FIRE has been involved in around the country.

The foundation will send a free copy to any student who requests one (you can do so online at thefireguides.org.). Or the guide can be downloaded from FIRE's website. It is also available from Amazon.com.

In this day and age, it's a volume every student needs to have in his bookcase, just in case he or she encounters a college administrator who supports free speech in theory - but just can't tolerate it in practice.

Scot Lehigh's e-mail address is lehigh@globe.com