After the Stanford debacle, its Law Dean published a strong and lengthy defense of free speech, and is requiring all students to be trained in free expression, and Cornell’s President and Provost recently shot down an effort by the Student Assembly to require “trigger warnings”in all classes. The President and Provost wrote: “Academic freedom, which is a fundamental principle in higher education, establishes the right of faculty members to determine what they teach in their classrooms and how they teach it, provided that they behave in a manner consistent with professional ethics and competence, and do not introduce controversial matters unrelated to the subject of their course.”

But far too often, university administrators are supine, and even complicit, in student hostility toward disagreeable ideas. The notion that hearing unwelcome ideas is somehow harmful to students seems to be taken as a given in many cases. But in fact it shouldn’t be, and to see why it’s worth revisiting a 1986 book by then-law professor Lee Bollinger.