New Threats to Freedom from FIRE on Vimeo.

How confused and bass ackwards is the concept of free speech on campus? The video above from FIRE will give you an inkling. It tells the story of how a Washington State student wrote and staged a musical parodying The Passion of the Christ--and how administrators, campus groups, and students reacted. In a nutshell: the campus bureaucracy (including security) coordinated with offended students to hijack the musical via heckler's veto--and then proudly defended their actions as a responsible exercise of free speech.

The case is recounted in more detail in FIRE president Greg Lukianoff's chapter in New Threats to Freedom, a new book from Templeton Press that includes essays from Christopher Hitchens, David Mamet, Anne Applebaum, Shelby Steele, and more.