Free Speech in the College Community

In Real Life, few people's right to free speech is protected by tenure; on the other hand, what is ""fair use"" IRL is plagiarism on campus. O'Neil argues that academies are different from the rest of the world, and he should know. The director of the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression and the former president of the universities of Virginia and Wisconsin, O'Neil offers a patient, almost patronizing explanation of why universities cannot legally and should not morally curb speech. In each chapter he dramatizes issues through the use of letters and memoranda based on actual events. Each fictionalized exemplar is followed by a discussion held according to good Socratic method. Among the most intriguing are his discussions of e-mail, Internet access and what sort of power the university has over its electronic networks, as well as speech codes and the difficulties of defining just what real harassment is. O'Neil suggests that ""resorting to such measures as curbing views or ideas implies that we lack (or failed to use) subtler means of persuasion."" But the content is marred by O'Neil's fictional lawyers and administrators, a group as stodgy and dignified as the college bigwigs Groucho lampoons in Horsefeathers. And his reviews of celebrated cases (e.g., Leonard Jeffries's anti-Semitic comments while chairman of African Studies at CCNY) are fodder for abstractions rather than interesting reportage. O'Neil seems to see his duty as reminding his brother presidents that, as infuriating as students and professors are, they have to be treated in accordance with the Bill of Rights. (Mar.)