Most of the universities—certainly the private ones—were within their legal rights to set standards for behavior on their campuses. But universities are neither churches nor finishing schools: their mission and moral charter, their reason for being, is not to convert errant minds or to teach good manners. Their mission is to advance knowledge by teaching and practicing public criticism. Alas, many of them are doing exactly what a university, of all institutions, should not do: defining offensive speech as quasi-violent behavior, and treating it accordingly.
