A university or college can be viewed as a community. Let's say that the president, officers, and faculty assembly of Reynold's school found that the advocacy for murder was antithetical to the stated mission and standards of the college. Would they not be within their rights as an academic community/institution to insist that he explain himself, and/or disavow his statement, and/or face some form of sanction, including dismissal?

No.

First, the bedrock of academic freedom is that professors must be able to advocate freely without worrying that what they say will offend university administrators and cost them their jobs. If there is one place where people should be liberated from the worry that they will be punished for their views, it is academia. The point of academia is to provide an environment where ideas can flourish freely.

Secondly, when it comes to state-run universities such as the University of Tenneessee, there are First Amendment restrictions on the institution's ability to punish professors for the views they should express, and there should be.

Many of the people who would appeal to First Amendment values in order to defend Reynolds (as Reynolds himself did today in responding to the column) would be the same ones who would (as Campos points out) screech about Ward Churchill's employment as a professor. Nonetheless, the most effective response to grotesque ideas is stigmatization and outcast, not institutional punishment and suppression.

But let me persist for a moment, and note that Reynolds is advocating an unlawful act. Take murder/assasination off the table for a moment, and let's say he is instead advocating plageurism. He fervently believes that all the good ideas have already been published, and that the only course forward is to blend blocks of already-published text into any and all new scholarship.

There ARE people who believe that the very concept of "copyright" is corrupt, that it constitutes an infringement of personal freedom to bar someone from, say, posting a book or article in its entirety on their website, or who think that concepts of "plageurism" are merely tools used to enforce property rights.

I think those arguments are absurd and silly, but I would not want pro-plageurism ideas banned from the classroom. There are no ideas so scared that they should be immune from questioning. If certain ideas are not allowed to be expressed in academia, where can they be? And who decides what the prohibited views are? Academic administrators?

In such a case, cannot the university state that Reynold's instruction is actually harming students, in contravention to the mission and rules of the university? That he is doing damage to them and others, and must cease such activity?

College students are adults, not children. They study Mein Kampf. They read all sorts of competing philosophical theories, including ones that are generally regarded as repugnant. The point of college is to expose people to a wide array of ideas so that they can develop critical faculties of thought. They're not there to be inculcated with moral lessons and to be guided by Daddy substitutes who are to look after their welfare.

What about the biology professor who teaches students in a public university that evolution is a satanic lie?

I'd much rather have that than vest the power in university administrators to create lists of Prohibited Topics. What if the administrators are the ones who believe that evoluation is a satanic lie, and that those who teach evolution as fact are the real corrupters who should be fired? What possible principled objection could you raise to that?

Whenever topics like this come up (hate speech laws, etc.), I just never can come close to understanding why those who advocate censorship powers always assume that those powers will be exercised against the ideas that they dislike rather than against the ones they like. Assume that the censorship powers you advocate will be vested in the hands of those who disagree, rather than agree with you, and then ask whether you still think they're a good idea.

GG, you speculate this "should embolden frightened American Congressional war opponents." As someone who didn't read you until you arrived at Salon, it's a pleasure to see you have such a droll sense of humor.

To be clear, "should" in that sentence means "ought to," not "likely will."

A promise that "a total of about 3,000 British soldiers will have left southern Iraq by the end of 2007, if the security there is sufficient" sounds like the endless promises we have heard that things will settle down in one more Friedman unit and we can start withdrawing.

The withdrawal of 1,500 troops is definite and unconditional and set to a fixed timetable. The remainder appears conditioned on certain goals, but we'll see once he makes the formal announcement.

That's all fixed. All the quotes were from Richard Wolffe of Newsweek (and formerly The Financial Times). Somehow, "Michael Wolffe" entered my brain -- who knows why? It's usually best not to explore those things. But all the quotes were correct. "Michael" was just a typo.