I started the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education because of a trend I began to detect in the 1980’s; initially often well-meaning attempts to make campuses more welcoming were leading to a watering-down of free speech and academic freedom at our universities. “Political correctness”—the convention that makes equivocation and dishonesty de rigeur for a “polite” and “comfortable” environment—became the norm.

On Veterans Day this year, Suffolk University Law professor Michael Avery generated controversy with an e-mail to fellow faculty members criticizing a care-packages-for-the-troops drive at the law school. Avery’s words upset many in the community, including an adjunct faculty member currently serving in Afghanistan, Major Robert Roughsedge.  Maj. Roughsedge was so incensed by the comments—and especially by Suffolk’s refusal to fire and/or censure Avery for them—that he resigned. Maj. Roughsedge won considerable editorial support for his position.

In our column, an excerpt of which is after the jump, Daniel Schwartz and I  argue that Major Roughsedge’s critique and resignation—far from a reasonable response to professor Avery’s e-mail—represented something we see far too often in academia, albeit more often on the speech-intolerant Left: the attempt to punish while failing to engage uncomfortable speech. Instead of debating with Professor Avery, Major Roughsedge accused Avery of spewing “hate speech,” and then Roughsedge quit the academy when Avery wasn’t fired.

In  1970 the so-called “counter-cultural” movement was at its height, and the law firm of Flym, Zalkind & Silverglate was in the eye of the storm. During the prior year, city and court officials in both Boston (Suffolk County) and Cambridge (Middlesex County) took aim at the Avatar, a new, upstart “alternative” newspaper that had thundered onto the local scene. The Avatarwas published by the fledgling Fort Hill Community, a family of folks living together in several buildings located at the top of the Fort Hill section of Boston, the second highest point in the city. At the time the group was led by Mel Lyman, a charismatic and talented harmonica player who had previously played in the famous Jim Kweskin’s Jug Band.

Avatar was a spirited, audacious, and in-your-face newspaper. It belonged squarely in the avant-garde tradition, and was not terribly respectful of established authority. During the course of several issues, it carried news and opinion columns criticizing the powers-that-be, including the Boston and Cambridge municipal councils and police departments, and even some of the district court judges who, in those days, operated like lords of the manor, unquestioned dictators in their own local fiefdoms, in courts where there were neither stenographers nor tape recorders. None of those in power appreciated the jabs directed at them by the writers of the Avatar.