Shapiro’s targeting marks the 10th attempt to get a professor sanctioned for ideological reasons at Georgetown University since 2015. Five attempts have been successful, with sanctions involving investigation, resignation, suspension and termination.

In a similar case, as journalist Bari Weiss pointed out, Georgetown rightly defended the rights of another professor, Carol Christine Fair, who tweeted in 2018 that “entitled white men” who defended then-Supreme Court nominee Brett M. Kavanaugh “deserve miserable deaths while feminists laugh as they take their last gasps.” Fair added the suggestion that “we castrate their corpses and feed them to swine.” Her tweets were no less offensive than Shapiro’s; they were just from the other political direction. To her credit, Fair has joined a letter supporting Shapiro.

But threats to free speech on campus aren’t just limited to the “politically incorrect.” A professor at University of Illinois Chicago was placed on leave for using two redacted slurs in a law school hypothetical involving workplace discrimination. Around the corner at Chicago State University, administrators threatened two professors with legal action for operating a blog critical of administrative decisions. At least 10 states are currently considering bills that would impose “divisive” content bans in higher education. If enacted, they would contradict First Amendment decisions going back to the 1950s.