I was wrong on both counts.

Late in the event, he declared, “I don't want anyone's speech to be suppressed in any setting.” The root of the disagreement was his belief that little speech is restricted.

And earlier in his remarks, Harper declared that while colleges may ask students to voluntarily limit their speech in various ways, like not wearing offensive costumes, “I invite our opponents to present us more than a handful of written, institutional policies––where it's been put in writing that you can't say certain things. You can't wear certain costumes. Sure, students would be encouraged to do or not do something. But I, as a higher-education scholar who studied thousands of colleges and universities, have never seen a written institutional policy.”

That statement is baffling.

The Foundation of Individual Rights in Education keeps track of colleges that have speech restrictions, rating each institution green, yellow, or red. To receive the worst rating, a college must have at least one policy “that both clearly and substantially restricts freedom of speech.” That threshold is met only when a policy “unambiguously infringes on what is or should be protected expression” in a way that is “obvious on the face of the policy and does not depend on how the policy is applied.”

The University of Pennsylvania, where Harper teaches, earns the best rating from FIRE, green, for having policies that “normally protect free speech.” Institutions with “red light” ratings for policies that unambiguously impinge upon expression include the following:

That is only the beginning.

I trust that I needn’t run through D, E, an F colleges to hammer home the ubiquity of written rules that limit what one can express. Even if Professor Harper were to defend some of those rules, it beggars belief to think that he could run through colleges beginning with G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, and P and still fall short of his “handful of written, institutional policies” threshold, let alone his claim to have “never seen” one.

What’s more, a written policy doesn’t determine if free expression is protected or violated in practice. And one needn’t search long to find widespread examples of free speech being threatened or assaulted outright. To cite just one example, since Harper brought up the matter of costume controversies: UCLA is a public institution that is bound by the First Amendment; as such, it has no written policy banning students from wearing offensive costumes. Nevertheless, administrators at the campus suspended a fraternity for holding a “Kanye Western” theme party, where attendees dressed like the famous rapper and his celebrity wife, Kim Kardashian.