F.I.R.E., THE FOUNDATION FOR INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS IN EDUCATION is launching a massive assault on campus speech codes:

A civil liberties group has filed a lawsuit challenging the speech code at Pennsylvania’s Shippensburg University, the first move in what the group says will be an all-out assault on speech codes at public universities nationwide.

The Philadelphia-based Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) filed the suit Tuesday in federal court in Harrisburg. It alleges that the school’s speech code violates students’ rights by, among other things, outlawing speech that is “inflammatory, demeaning or harmful toward others.”

“It is time for somebody to say to public colleges and universities that the First Amendment is the law of the land,” said Alan Charles Kors, a history professor at the University of Pennsylvania and president of FIRE.

The codes, which FIRE said are in place at two-thirds of U.S. colleges, gained popularity in the 1980s and are intended to foster diversity and civil debate.

I suspect that external pressure over antiwar statements from faculty members will produce a new enthusiasm for the First Amendment and academic freedom at many campuses.