From Steven Backus, director of the College of St. Scholastica's Rose Warner Writing/Critical Thinking Center:

Devon's face flushed. His lips began to quiver. A tear formed in the corner of his right eye, and he wiped it away with the back of his hand before hastily shoving his paper into his book and standing up. "I'm leaving now," he said.

Devon, who was around 18 and a walk-in at the writing center I direct, wanted to see if what he had written for freshman composition "made sense." I was pushing him to identify rhetorical elements like the purpose and value of the newspaper article he had written about and to answer questions like: Was the article coherent and well written? Did the author develop his argument fully?

Written by Paul Theroux for The New York Times, "The Male Myth" was a shocker from the beginning. Theroux opens by saying he's always hated being a man. In between venting about machismo and shadowboxing with elite female authors, Mr. Prolific skewers athletes, pokes fun at punch-drunk writers, and debunks the Boy Scouts. The purpose? To entertain and instruct. The value? High.

Devon, however, was "offended" by the article, and that was the thrust of his paper. I flat-out told him he just couldn't say that in an academic paper. He could phone his mother and tell her about how offensive Mr. Theroux was, or he could write to the author himself with a diatribe. But critical analysis, while it may begin with an emotion, is a practice that requires keen observation, sharp reflection, cold-hearted logic, crisp reasoning, icy discernment, and cool evaluation. When I explained this to Devon, he reached for the Kleenex.

Students and far too many professors and administrators make no distinction between "harassment" and "offense." Offended students will often seek punishment for jokes or even political opinions through the student judiciary and lawsuits.

Unfortunately, the legal landscape is so badly muddied by a number of overly expansive or unclear court opinions that universities believe they have to take seriously even claims that clearly implicate unquestionably protected speech. Due, in part, to the frenzy to protect themselves from these lawsuits, universities often respond to any report of "offensive" speech aggressively - and free speech is often the first casualty.

For years, I have reported on many cases of college and university administrators infected with "political correctness," punishing students and faculty members for allegedly prejudicial and otherwise "offensive" remarks - as if there were a constitutional right not to be offended. I have now found the most outrageous case of all.

At Brandeis University in Massachusetts, professor Donald Hindley - on the faculty for 48 years - teaches a course on Latin American politics. Last fall, he described how Mexican migrants to the United States used to be discriminatorily called "wetbacks." An anonymous student complained to the administration, accusing Hindley of using prejudicial language - the first complaint against him in 48 years.

After an investigation, during which Hindley was not told the nature of the complaint, Brandeis Provost Marty Krauss informed Hindley that "The University will not tolerate inappropriate, racial and discriminatory conduct by members of its faculty." A corollary accusation was that students suffered "significant emotional trauma" when exposed to such a term.

An administration monitor was assigned to his class. Threatened with "termination," Hindley was ordered to take a sensitivity-training class. With no charges against him, no evidence of misconduct given him and no hearing, he refused - in the spirit of Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, for whom this university is named.

A passionate protector of freedom of expression in a series of seminal Supreme Court opinions, Brandeis wrote in Whitney v. California (1972): "Those who won independence believed ... that freedom to think as you will and to speak as you think are ... indispensable to the discovery and spread of political truth."

The Brandeis Faculty Senate - joined by Brandeis's Committee on Faculty Rights and Responsibilities - objected to this assault on elementary fairness and academic freedom. So did the Massachusetts affiliate of the ACLU, and in what would have greatly pleased Justice Brandeis, so did the university's student newspaper, "The Hoot," declaring:

"The administration's instant punitive response made Hindley's guilt a foregone conclusion. ... With this kind of an approach, how will the University attract the high caliber professors who will be able to give the incoming classes of students the education they deserve? How will it draw students who want a free and open academic environment?"

Hindley tells me that despite the response of the faculty Senate and the committee on faculty rights, individual tenured members of his department, though outraged, would not stand up publicly on his behalf. One of them explained to him, "I'm about to retire." He and others fear retaliation.