Ohio’s Oberlin College has achieved national notoriety for the zeal of its progressive activism. According to a 2016 story in the New Yorker, students have bombarded administrators with endless demands for accommodation, including abolishing midterms, banning grades below C, the addition of “trigger warnings” to classic literature and even an $8.20 hourly wage for engaging in activism. It isn’t surprising in this light that a hate-crime hoax, spurred by a shoplifting incident at a nearby business, was enough to put students in attack mode.

On...