Free Speech, But With A Price?

To hear the arguments from some quarters, college professors, particularly those at public universities, should not blog if their opinions end up offending some, and indeed they should have their jobs threatened if they express unsettling opinions. 

So I started thinking about professors who blog.  Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit, who actually has challenged the patriotism of those peddling the "Bush lied" argument, is a law professor at University of Tennessee.  Many of the authors at Volokh are college professors, including Eugene Volokh himself, who teaches at UCLA, as does Prof. Bainbridge.  At No Left Turns, the two most frequent bloggers are Peter Schramm and Joe Knippenberg, college professors both.  Dan Drezener is also a college professor. 

These blogs could be considered conservative or libertarian blogs.  Are there any left-wing professors who blog?  It didn't take me long to find some.  I already knew about Juan Cole, who teaches at University of Michigan.  I found Blog Left, which features an image of George W. Bush flipping the bird. It is run by another bunch of UCLA guys.  This guy Mark Foster teaches sociology at a community college in Kansas and says this: " Given the latest offensive comments by Pat Robertson and Bill O'Reilly, I have concluded that "America" is actually a name for a terminal disease, and the more one lives in the U.S., the more likely one is likely to contract it."  And William Dorman teaches at Cal State Sacramento and runs an anti-war blog.  And I found these sites without trying really hard, and I note that all these left leaning bloggers teach at public institutions. 

Should all these people be disciplined by their universities because they inevitably say things that make some people mad?  I bet the people of Kansas might be upset to know that they are paying the salary of a guy who calls America a disease. 

I have a very liberal colleague who writes for the Aberdeen American News.  I bet his opinions make plenty of people very mad.  And, given the circulation of the American News, I know that more people read his column than read this site, and he is more to the left of the average South Dakotan than I am to the right. So I suspect he is angering far more people than am I. By the Chad Schuldt logic, he should be disciplined by the university.  After all, I bet some people are mad that they pay the salary of a man who offends them with his, to them, obnoxious left-wing opinions. (I note that this is what some people might believe, not what I believe, as I think my colleague is a good and thoughtful man).  Or is it that when, say, Prof. Blanchard blogs here, that is an offense to the state of South Dakota, but when he writes in the American News, as he does regularly, then it is perfectly fine?  Does my left-wing colleague intimidate conservative students who must take his classes?  Lest there be any confusion, I think not. It is all how one runs the classroom, and I know my colleagues, left and right, and I run our classrooms as professionals, not as partisans. 

I think that academia exists so that learned people can freely exchange their ideas with their students and with the public.  It is the college professor's job to work in the realm of ideas, and not just ideas that make people happy or comfortable.  Professors of all stripes, even apparently anti-American ones like the fellow from Kansas, should be given free rein.  Indeed, on this site Prof. Blanchard has defended Ward Churchill's right to celebrate the 9-11 terrorists without losing his job, although the fact that Churchill misrepresented his credentials is another matter. 

Is blogging categorically different from writing books, articles, and newspaper editorials?  I would not call it scholarly work, but neither are the books and articles written by the scores of academics who write on sensative subjects and write for a broad, not scholarly, audience and are published by popular, not academic, presses. 

If Chad Schuldt had it his way, all of the blogs I listed above, right and left, would be shut down by the bloggers' universities.  I think the nation is a better place because these academics voice their opinions, just as I think the Aberdeen area is better for having both Prof. Blanchard and my liberal colleague duke it out on the editorial page.  Academics are paid, in part, to air their considered opinions, and when it comes to public universities I call that a wise use of public dollars.