Students at Middlebury College gave the school’s administrators a lesson this week in the difference between cowardice and courage when dealing with a controversial speaker.

Recall how in March 2017 protesters at the private Vermont liberal-arts college shut down a speech by Charles Murray, injuring professor Allison Stanger in the process. Partially in response to that fiasco, Middlebury’s political science department founded the Alexander Hamilton Forum, which promotes free speech. The forum planned to host a speech this...