Texas A&M has joined the growing list of public schools that allow their commitment to tolerance and diversity to curtail their commitment to free speech and academic freedom. Upon learning that some students were planning to celebrate MLK Day by throwing an off-campus "ghetto party," campus administrators launched an immediate investigation to determine who was organizing the party and circulated flyers expressing its official disapproval of the event. A&M's ghetto party is an annual event; students come dressed as black stereotypes, and some wear blackface. Both black and white students have attended in the past.

The party was cancelled after administrators confronted the student organizers. Today's Chronicle of Higher Education (subscription only) reports that the cancellation does not mark the end of this, however. Ronald E. Sasse, A&M's director of student life, told the Chronicle that the university is continuing to investigate, that it is determined to find out how much resident hall advisors knew about it (the party was advertised on flyers posted in dorms) and whether any leaders of student groups were involved in organizing it. Once the investigation is complete, the university may take disciplinary action against the organizers. "We try really hard to promote an inclusive environment, and these kinds of situations certainly don't help us," Sasse said. "It's just hard to understand how somebody couldn't realize that this was wrong in this day and age." As at UT Knoxville and UVa, where similar debacles arose last fall when some students wore blackface to fraternity-sponsored Halloween parties, A&M's college administrators imagine that they can legislate tolerance and coerce students into becoming appropriately sensitive. Once again, public college administrators forget their obligation to the First Amendment in their zealous desire to squelch offensive expression. Once again, they decline to learn from other institutions' past mistakes, and they ignore the law.

A&M English professor Marco Portales offers unusually candid insight into this garbled logic. "If we donít take a stand, this will continue to happen," Portales told the A&M Eagle. Though the party has been cancelled, "the damage has been done." Portales thinks A&M should expel students involved in ghetto parties and like events, as it "maligns" the reputation of the university. Though this may sound like the Orwellian agenda of a bureaucratic drone who has no respect for either free inquiry or free speech, think again. Portales has it all worked out. Protecting the reputation of the university is not, to Portales' mind, incompatible with protecting individual rights because there are some viewpoints that no one has the right to express. ìDiverse viewpoints ought to prevail,î he said. ìAlthough, if a viewpoint is maligning without provocation, I donít think that is constitutionally protected. You are, in effect, assaulting people. You are misrepresenting them. You are making fun of people.î Voila: you can be as diverse as you want, as long as you adhere to the party line; viewpoints that offend--or "malign"--are not protected by the First Amendment; making fun of people is the same thing as misrepresenting them which is the same thing as assaulting them. If you wonder where students get their desire for speech codes and their twisted perception that suppressing unpopular or abhorrent expression is the proper means of creating a vital educational atmosphere, look at their teachers. Portales' confused and wrongheaded pronouncements on expression are an exemplary instance of the professorial malpractice that so often surrounds questions of controversial campus speech.

UPDATE: A&M administrators plan to send the residents of the dorm responsible for throwing the party to sensitivity training "to make them more aware of the adverse effects of their actions."

UPDATE UPDATE: Eugene Volokh has more.