The apparatchik of the communist cell has to toe the party line handed down from the commissar. All members must act to drag comrades who deviate from the line back to conformity. This may take the form of the struggle session, in which members take turns scolding the deviant, who must confess his crimes against the party. In the worst case scenario, the deviant will be punished by or expelled from the party.
The public university in a free society should not be like a communist cell. There is no party line in a free university. The core value of the public university is providing a space where individuals are free to express opinions however much they deviate from the presumed orthodoxy. The administration must therefore be ideologically and politically neutral in its policies and pronouncements.
Imagine a college teacher kicking a student out of class who uttered an opinion with which the teacher or other students disagreed or found offensive. Imagine a university administration expelling students for disagreeable or offensive opinions. Imagine a college student being expelled from school for posts on social media.
Have these things happened? If they have, they’re violations of the First Amendment. As long as students are honoring time and place rules and not disrupting the classroom, they are entitled to their opinions—however disagreeable or offensive. People can believe and say whatever they want in America. It’s a free country, after all.
The same is true for college teachers. Punishing or expelling a college teacher for opinions expressed at the appropriate time and in the appropriate place is a violation of the teacher’s civil rights.
How did we ever wind up in a place where this was not obvious? The first thought an administration should have at a complaint from students, faculty, or the community should not be “We are looking into it,” or “We have a process,” but “At this institution we uphold the First Amendment and the principle of academic freedom.” Anything less than that pronouncement is an act of cowardice or equivocation, the latter a troubling sign of the commitment to the foundational ethic of a free and open society.
freedom and reason 