A press release issued yesterday by John Bonnell, professor of language and literature at Macomb Community College:

On June 16, 2003, Macomb Community College suspended me, John Bonnell, without pay until August 16, 2003. I am a professor of language and literature at this institution, and had flourished for thirty years without incident, until the College took it upon itself five years ago to initiate what can best be described as a witch hunt. The College took this action to strengthen its program of censorship, a program it believes finds support from a federal judiciary that, like the College, denies the relevance of the First Amendment to American campuses. The specific trigger for this assault was the complaint of a single student who objected primarily to discussion of the sexual content in a story by a famous author. (I am not at liberty to divulge specific elements of the complaint because the College claims that students who wish to censor professors have the right to do so in virtual anonymity and in guaranteed secrecy. This is a most effective way to encourage complainants who want to modify or silence teachers whose ideas or words they find irritating.) The College and the Faculty "Union," apparently independently, telephoned a dozen or so students from the same class in an effort to find support for the complainant's charges. However, no substantive support was forthcoming. In fact, some of these students found the College's invasive, scurrilous, and defamatory inquisition itself very upsetting.

On June 25, 2003 I appeared before the Macomb Community College Faculty Organization (MCCFO) to appeal to its governing officers and Senate to file a grievance against the College's suspension. The Senators and officers had been advised beforehand by me that the College's claims were essentially slanderous. After some discussion, larded with insinuations and even accusations, the Senate voted against my appeal. They argued that the College's speech code was a useful and necessary guide for professionals of the 21st century. They said offensive speech was any speech the College did not like, that any student might not like, or that they themselves did not like. By clear implication, the only person not qualified to judge the appropriateness of in-class discourse is the targeted professor. They remonstrated with me, and called my intelligence into question, because I persist in believing outmoded notions of free speech. They said that the Contract's first enumerated Right of Teachers, obviously patterned on the First Amendment ("The teacher shall be entitled to freedom of discussion within the classroom on all matters which he considers relevant to the subject matter under discussion."), does not mean what it seems to say, or what I think it means. Before discussion on this head could be fully developed, the chair closed debate and called for a motion.

As a result of this fifth betrayal in a row, I must now endure another suspension without pay. The principles of academic freedom, of due process in the face of allegations, and of union solidarity are finished at Macomb College. Free speech itself, along with the very idea of "higher" education and, indeed, of democracy, are on the brink of perishing altogether.

One reason these cases are so common is that colleges and universities have created an environment that encourages them. In attempting to protect students' alleged sensitivities, and in confusedly assuming that the classroom should be a "safe space" where students always feel comfortable, administrators have written speech codes and harassment policies that deliver the power to destroy careers into the hands of students who are neither accountable for unfounded or exaggerated complaints nor fully aware of the damage they can cause. That these codes and policies are often unconstitutional, that they frequently empower complainants at the expense of the First Amendment rights of the accused, only adds a further dimension of sadly telling irony to an already outrageous situation in which political and ideological concerns that are frankly hostile to the spirit of inquiry are driving institutions of higher learning.