Read the rest here Hat tip to Greg Lukianoff at The Torch.

Last semester, the faculty senate at the University of Alabama (UA) passed an Orwellian speech code designed to restrict “any behavior that demeans or reduces an individual based on group affiliation or personal traits, or which promotes hate or discrimination.”

Anyone armed with an 11th grade education can see that such a speech code is unconstitutional. Indeed, many of the UA “diversity initiatives” such as the Vagina Monologues would be banned under such a code, if the university had any intention of applying the code equally. Come to think of it, booing an Auburn football player would be banned under the code, too. Read the rest here.

UPDATE: Robert Shibley at The Torch, the blog of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education , has a long post on this. Randy Barnett at the Volokh Conspriacy has also commented.

ANOTHER UPDATE: The comments just keep on coming. Todd Zywicki at the Volokh Conspiracy, Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit, and QD at Southern Appeal have taken note of the Alabama student rebellion.

Here are some suggestions:

1. The AAUP, FIRE, and the ACLU should send out press releases to each and every university president in the United States. They should claim victory. And the message, in so many words, should be this: You will be next if you try to smear somebody for exercising freedom in the classroom.

2. A letter should be sent to the UNLV Board of Trustees thanking them for defending academic freedom and forcing the president to back down. (One has no doubt this is what actually happened.)

3. Professor Hoppe should send a letter to the Denver/Boulder newspaper comparing himself to Professor Churchill and calling on the Colorado administration to defend academic freedom.

This is a hard-won victory. Let us try to make use of it to maximum effect.

MacArthur, whatever his faults, articulated a clear policy and found the Acheson model of"limited war" odious. No politician since MacArthur -- not even Reagan -- was so clear, at least not until Bush. The problem is that Bush won't say so. He pretends, or used to, that the war in Iraq was really about weapons or terrorism or whatever. What it's actually about is the battle for the Middle East, that is, the strategic reallignment of forces throughout the region.

If the general were still alive, he'd no doubt fire off a letter to the press and irritate the heck out of everyone. He was direct. And it got him into trouble. I am not sure I agree with SCAP about Korea, but I do give him credit for articulating a clear vision. My hunch is that Bush has a similiar vision. It's just that he won't tell anyone about it.

What interests me, however, is not their whipped-dog snivelling, but the legacy of ambiguity they claim for their own. Why is it, one wonders, the debate on Southerness always turns on the question of why the South left the Union? And more to the point, why is this question always so hard to answer?

The reason is that the South itself decided long ago that this question should not be answered, at least not definitively. I do not mean the decision was a conscious one. It was more like a cultural consensus, motivated by group defensiveness. Because if Southern identity could be maintained as an always moving target, it was less likely to take a mortal hit from its adversaries.

I have heard"the South" spoken of as a political entity, a religious cause, a cultural bulwark against the intrusions of industrialism, and so on. Try to attack one and"the South" immediately changes shape and turns into something else. Beito and I tried to show that one of these"Souths," the one that considered slavery central to its existence, did figure more largely than the others in the debates of the 1850's. And as it always has,"the South" shifted its ground, saying, in essence,"but that's not the South we mean."

It has been that way for a long time. Indeed, it is one of the most successful political shape-shifting stories we historians have ever seen. Southerners will never define who they are, and will never let you do so, either -- and so the debate will never permit itelf to end. And, for what it's worth, that is what the South means to me.

Even the titilating website,"firethames.com," has closed up shop.

Should we be surprised? Probably not. Faculties are made up mostly of selfish and self-centered egoists who do not define themselves as members of the same class, and whose sense of collective interests, therefore, is deeply stunted. We behave as if we were singular little monads, and among us, narcissism as a character trait is our most telling feature. It's a good thing, too: without a heavy coating of narcissism we would have little else to defend ourselves against the fraud and perfidy of the administrative ruling class.

The consequence, however, is a social system in which people are encouraged to sell out for peanuts. Glamser and Stringer, whatever the merits of their case, carried more than the weight of their individual interests. They were seen, correctly, as symptomatic of a larger problem, i.e., the erosion of faculty governance and the decline of academic freedom. But Mississippi administrators knew something else: that faculty members almost always sell out when the rewards are high enough or the penalties too severe. It doesn't take much, either -- faculty members always sell themselves very cheaply.

You can bet administrators throughout the country took notice, and the next time tenure is threatened, they will feel emboldened.

Glamser and Stringer may have"won" their bit of coin, and can now slide into a mellow retirement. Their victory, however, is our loss, and we will all pay dearly for it in the years to come.

As part of a project, I examined the prison records and interviewed surviving American guards and their Japanese prisoners. Not one incident of cruelty to prisoners was reported. On the contrary, prison life was amazingly courteous, and both sides expressed a warmth and admiration for each other that is clearly the reverse of what we now find at the Baghdad prison under the command of American forces.

Iraq is not Japan, to be sure. But one finds, over and over again, the comparison being made. If there is any validity to it, then I suggest the main lesson to be learned is this: to convert an enemy into an ally cannot be done when prisoners are treated sadistically, and forced to perform sodomizing acts in front of their camera-toting American tormentors.

Richard Minear's 1971 book,"Victor's Justice," lambasted the American Occupation of Japan, and especially the Tokyo War Crimes Trial, for concealing a blood-lust for vengeance in the legal niceties of a courtroom charade. Yet in Iraq, what we see is not even the charade, nor any pretense of law and justice. In fact, it is not even the lust for vengeance. It is just stupid, blind cruelty.

We should remember that in 1945 Americans convicted and executed General Yamashita for less.

It is sad, but true, that we professors rarely act in concert, even when it is a matter of our own defense, or the defense of the disciplines we represent. That has got to to change. The administrative elite that now runs most of our colleges want to operate them like businesses, which means creating a flexible and pliable workforce that can hired and fired at will.

Forget tenure. It's over, or will be soon, at most public colleges and universities -- at least in all but name. Already low salaries will probably go lower, and as for health and retirement benefits? Forget about it. Think University of Phoenix.

If you, the readers of this blog, do not begin to take action by joining in the defense of your colleagues and disciplines, then should not be suprised to find in a few years that you have neither.

Join the AAUP; join FIRE; join the NAS today!

Recently, a colleague tried to obtain footage of Japanese Prime Minister Koizumi entering the Yakusuni Shrine in Tokyo. He was refused.

Yakusuni Shrine, for those who don't know, is the place where the spirits of Japanese war dead are enshrined and worshipped as gods. Tojo Hikeki, who, as Japan's war-time prime minister, ordered the attack on Pearl Habor, is one of the spirits installed at Yakusuni.

Since the war, Yakasuni has been the center of Japan's growing nationalist resurgency. Until the 1980's, no Prime Minister visited the Shrine officially, since doing so would enrage the anti-war elements of Japanese society and damage relations abroad, especially with Asian countries like China that has suffered at the hands of Japanese invaders.

All of that has since changed, and now, Japanese ministers and members of government routinely visit the Shrine. On August 15, the date of the Japanse surrender in 1945, even the Prime Minister visits and pays homage. Thus the question: can video footage of the current Prime Minister visiting the Shrine on August 15 be obtained?

Apparently not. The government-ownded TV station, NHK, refuses to provide it, calling it"too sensitive." We can understand why. Over the years, Japan has carefully cultivated an image of itself as a modern and peaceful democracy. What would the world say if people could see Koizumi marching in and out of Yakasuni where WWII kamakazi pilots are glorified?

The fault is not with NHK or the Japanese government. Their motives are obvious. But how is that the United States remains in the dark about resurgent Japanese nationalism? For the answer, I highly recommend Ivan Hall's recent book,"Bamboozled!"