This fall the University of California at Berkeley is marking the 50th anniversary of the Free Speech Movement that famously roiled the campus during the 1964-65 school year. What a difference a half-century makes. On Friday Chancellor Nicholas Dirks sent a message to Berkeley faculty, staff and students titled "Civility and Free Speech" that was at best a lukewarm defense of the First Amendment rights that those long-ago students passionately sought with protests and sit-ins because political speech was restricted on campus.

Mr....