After the Free Beacon story broke, Yale issued a statement denying that it had any intent of disciplining Colbert or alerting bar authorities down the line. “No student is investigated or sanctioned for protected speech,” the statement said.

Good to know. But that’s not the biggest challenge at Yale or at other law school campuses. It’s how to deal with a grievance culture in which every slight, real or perceived, is greeted with outsize demands for disciplinary consequences. There is — or should be — a distinction between sophomoric provocation and outright racism.

Every first-year law student learns in torts class about the plaintiff with the “eggshell skull” — someone who suffers a greater injury than normal and must be compensated accordingly. But in the modern world, it seems, everyone’ skulls are susceptible to cracking at the slightest provocation. “Taking the worst possible reading and then twisting it to make it worse is a practice that is all too common,” Colbert told me.