FIRE reports on one of those cases that you just could not make up:

ATLANTA, September 15, 2009--The abuse of campus sexual harassment policies to punish dissenting professors has hit a new low at East Georgia College (EGC) in Swainsboro. Professor Thomas Thibeault made the mistake of pointing out--at a sexual harassment training seminar--that the school's sexual harassment policy contained no protection for the falsely accused. Two days later, in a Kafkaesque irony, Thibeault was fired by the college president for sexual harassment without notice, without knowing his accuser or the charges against him, and without a hearing. Thibeault turned to the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) for help.

"If you were to write a novel about the abuse of sexual harassment regulations to get rid of a dissenter, you couldn't do better than the real-life story of Thomas Thibeault," FIRE President Greg Lukianoff said. "Anyone with a modicum of respect for freedom of speech or simple fairness should be aghast at this blatant abuse of power by East Georgia College."

Thibeault's ordeal started shortly after August 5, 2009 when, during a faculty training session regarding the college's sexual harassment policy, he presented a scenario regarding a different professor and asked, "what provision is there in the Sexual Harassment policy to protect the accused against complaints which are malicious or, in this case, ridiculous?" Vice President for Legal Affairs Mary Smith, who was conducting the session, replied that there was no such provision to protect the accused, so Thibeault responded that "the policy itself is flawed."

Two days later, Thibeault was summoned to EGC President John Bryant Black's office. According to Thibeault's written account of the meeting, which was sent to Black and which Black has not disputed, Thibeault met with Black and Smith. Black told Thibeault that he "was a divisive force in the college at a time when the college needed unity" and that Thibeault must resign by 11:30 a.m. or be fired and have his "long history of sexual harassment ... made public." This unsubstantiated allegation took Thibeault by surprise. Black added that Thibeault would be escorted off campus by Police Chief Drew Durden and that Black had notified the local police that he was prepared to have Thibeault arrested for trespassing if he returned to campus. At no point was Thibeault presented with the charges against him or given any chance to present a defense. Refusing to resign, Thibeault understood that he was fired.

FIRE has been fighting campus speech codes for over a decade. And all the while, campuses have gotten more and more clever about where they put their codes and how they frame them. A favorite place: harassment policies. It's a pretty good place to put them--it can fool some awfully smart people. I once had quite an exchange with Swarthmore professor Timothy Burke about his college's harassment policy. I argued it was a speech code; he said it wasn't. I believed I was right then, and I still think so. So does FIRE--which still gives Swarthmore a red light rating for its speech policies.

But that really doesn't matter much. What matters is faculty members who refuse to recognize--who are complicit with, or who even defend--clearly repressive policies in place at their institutions. That's going on at campuses across the nation; it's why FIRE can exist, why it has work to do. And it points to a major, system-wide failure of professional academic ethics that is rooted in a collective ignorance about the historical and conceptual parameters of academic freedom, free inquiry, due process, and self-governance. As such, it speaks, ultimately, to a kind of ostrich-like behavior that does damage to professors' ability to argue that they deserve academic freedom and the tenure system.

Where, you might ask, are Thibeault's faculty colleagues? Why haven't they risen up in his defense? Some might be fearful of retaliation. Some might agree that Thibeault was out of line and deserved what he got. Some may be clueless, blinkered, checked-out when it matters to be checked-in. Some have served on the "committee" (kangaroo court) charged with investigating him for criticizing the policy. Bottom line: Abdication of responsibility every whichaway.

Where does it all go? The explicit institutionalization of ideological conformity as a condition of continued employment. See, for example, FIRE's latest on how Virginia Tech has built ideological litmus tests into its tenure and promotion policies.