WOW, THAT’S QUITE A COINCIDENCE: “The New York Times published an eerie opinion piece on Thursday that used a potential attack on Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani as a hypothetical scenario hours before the head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ elite Quds Force was actually killed in remarkably similar fashion… ‘Is there an individual in an unfriendly country who cannot be apprehended? What if the former commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, Qassem Soleimani, visits Baghdad for a meeting and you know the address? The temptations to use hypersonic missiles will be many,’ Simon wrote.”

YOU DON’T HAVE TO BE SNIDE TO BE A COLLEGE ADMINISTRATOR, BUT IT HELPS. Holy Cross Dean of Students Michele C. Murray, on a talk by WSJ’s Heather Mac Donald: “The subtext of her talk was that discrimination no longer exists, or at least that we should not be bothered by it. Our students understood her message, even dressed as it was in Frederick Douglass quotes and references to ‘Faust’ and the virtues of the Western canon.” The students to whom she refers left en masse 15 minutes into Mac Donald’s talk. For this combination of mind-reading and anti-intellectualism, students and parents pay $69,810 a year.

USA TODAY: ONLY 63% OF AMERICANS WOULD MISS FREE SPEECH IF IT WERE TAKEN AWAY. I blame Twitter. But these numbers seem weirdly low generally: “nearly half would miss freedom of expression (46%) and the right to equal justice (45%).”

IN WAR [AGAINST WRONGTHINK], TRUTH IS THE FIRST CASUALTY: The University of Pennsylvania had long been one of the few colleges that did not have any written speech codes. Now that it’s brought them back, surprise–admins aren’t telling the truth about it!

C’MON, MAN. Public university rejects animal rights club, citing ‘emotional risk’ to students. Oh no! Vegetarians! Run!

“YIKES, NOPE, DENIED”: University of Scranton just stands by as student government denies recognition to conservative group.

FIRE’S 2020 SPEECH CODE RATINGS OUT TODAY: Of the 471 rated colleges across the country, 89% still have red- or yellow-light ratings for having written policies that censor speech, which is outrageous. But for the very first time, more than 10% have green lights. (OK, 11%, but hey, it’s more than 10!) Odds are good your alma mater is in the ratings. How’d it do?

THE STATE OF MISSISSIPPI GOES GREEN (FOR FREE SPEECH ON CAMPUS): Hooray for Jackson State University, whose move to a green-light speech code rating from FIRE means that Mississippi joins Arizona as the only two states whose top colleges have eliminated all unconstitutional speech codes. For once, taxpayers least hard hit!

AFTER REPORT OF RACIST INCIDENT, SYRACUSE SUSPENDS ALL FRATERNITIES, EVEN MINORITY ONES. Syracuse has gone utterly bonkers over a series of racial incidents on its campus, but this guilt-by-lack-of-association is nonsensical even in that light. This is total disconnection with reality, at $74,799 a year.

INVESTIGATE ALL THE THINGS! Congress doesn’t get to have all the fun today. Six(!) Ohio universities have called in the FBI to investigate stickers, graffiti, or other offensive postings. The Kekistani culprit at Western Connecticut appears to remain at large despite FBI involvement. George Washington University is investigating Snapchats all on its own, though, so it’s possible that the FBI is running out of agents to throw at the national crisis of people saying stuff other people don’t like.

IT IS IN FACT OK TO SAY ‘IT’S OK TO BE WHITE’ ON A PUBLIC CAMPUS. As long as you follow the posting rules! That’s not going to change just because Western Connecticut State University’s president is running around with his hair on fire promising “the severest disciplinary actions, including dismissal as well as possible civil and criminal actions” if a student is found to be the culprit. Also, talk about making the anonymous poster’s point for him (or her)…

FORMER SLAVE FREDERICK DOUGLASS, 1860: “To suppress free speech is a double wrong. It violates the rights of the hearer as well as those of the speaker.”

CHAPEL HILL PROF AT UNC-GREENSBORO CONFERENCE, 2019: “The very idea of freedom, postulated in universalist terms in the 19th century, and serving as the ontological structure for the First Amendment, doesn’t allow the black.”

You kind of have to read the description of this conference to believe it.

THE NEW REGULATIONS REINING IN TITLE IX ABUSES CAN’T COME OUT SOON ENOUGH: Another professor gets sideswiped by his university’s Kafkaesque Title IX regime: “In effect, a public college’s administrators coached a disgruntled student on how to make a bogus Title IX claim and how to make it look legitimate.”

THE ARREST OF UCONN STUDENTS FOR USING A RACIAL SLUR IS CLEARLY UNCONSTITUTIONAL. As will be any action that UConn, a state institution, takes against them. These unlawful abuses need to stop, now, and people and organizations need to stop excusing them, or we’re all next.

“YOU HAVE THE OPPORTUNITY TO REVERSE COURSE. WE URGE YOU TO TAKE IT.” Five members of Congress, led by Sens. Wyden and Rubio, give some sound advice to the CEO of Activision-Blizzard over kowtowing to the Chinese Communist Party. I get that China has lots of money, but I suspect that buys them a lot less pull with voters and consumers than many in government and business seem to think.

IS YOUR HALLOWEEN COSTUME AN “ACT OF INTOLERANCE?” At Furman University in South Carolina, it might well be, which is why Furman has been awarded FIRE’s Speech Code of the Month for October 2019.

WORLD OF WARCRAFT DEVELOPER BLIZZARD “BANS GAMER, RESCINDS MONEY, ON HONG KONG PROTEST SUPPORT.” I guess they agreed with NY Times/New Yorker writer Andrew Marantz that “Free Speech is Killing Us.” Or they’re just big NBA fans.

One wonders how much of this goes unreported.

CAN DIVERSITY AND EXCELLENCE COEXIST ON CAMPUS? Harvard computer science professor (and former Harvard College dean) Harry Lewis, who has been a real champion of freedom of association on that increasingly benighted campus, reviews former Yale Law dean Anthony Kronman’s book The Assault on American Excellence.

AT U. OF IOWA, “UNIVERSITY OFFICIALS HELD ‘PERSONALLY LIABLE’ FOR DISCRIMINATION AGAINST CHRISTIAN STUDENT GROUP.” More of this needs to happen. There has to be some cost to college officials who just flat-out ignore the law when it comes to disfavored groups on campus. Those denied “qualified immunity,” a doctrine that effectively gives public college administrators a blank check to abuse nearly any and all student rights, include Vice President for Student Life Melissa Shivers, Associate Dean of Student Organizations William Nelson, and Coordinator for Student Organization Development Andrew Kutcher. It takes serious work to lose this immunity, so whenever a college administrator does so, it’s worth sitting up to take notice.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Penn Law student government holds a “town hall” featuring Dean Ted Ruger to discuss “the Amy Wax situation.” (The “Amy Wax situation” is that law professor Amy Wax has expressed unpopular-at-Penn beliefs on race and immigration.) Yet somehow, local expert on Amy Wax-ian beliefs Amy Wax was not invited or even told about the event. Classy.

WESTERN ILLINOIS’ WALKING DEAD: 16 years after its supposed elimination, WIU’s “zombie free speech zone” still hobbles along. As one victim of the undead menace put it, “I was four when this policy was supposedly eliminated, but the unconstitutional free speech zone somehow still lives on.”

ANOTHER CAMPUS FREE SPEECH LAWSUIT: “Some people get in trouble for smoking weed, but at Jones College, I got in trouble just for trying to talk about it.”

WALMART ENDING HANDGUN AND “SHORT-BARREL RIFLE” AMMO SALES: I confess I never thought of .223 and 5.56mm as “short-barrel rifle” ammunition, as some of those suckers are pretty long. Real winner here has to be Mosin Nagant owners. Walmart: for all your 7.62x54R ammo needs!

A SOLID WIN FOR ACADEMIC FREEDOM: New School prof charged with racial harassment for using the “n-word” in class while discussing author James Baldwin has charges dropped just days after FIRE took the case public. This business of treating certain words as though their mere utterance, regardless of context, has some kind of mysterious and unstoppable power, is not reasonable. It’s purely magical thinking, and has no place at a university.

‘SILENCED STAGES’ ON CAMPUS: It’s not just your imagination. George Leef reports on a new book out from Prof. George LaNoue: “Based on his study of 97 colleges and 28 law schools during the 2014-2015 academic year… [f]or most students in American higher education, the opportunity to hear on-campus debates about important public policy issues does not exist.”