This is a dilemma that outsiders don’t appreciate. They see 19-year-olds chanting “No more racism!” while everyone else in the lecture hall, including the conservative speaker and the security guards, stand in silence, and they wonder why nobody makes them stop. Conservative critics put it up to liberal bias, but that’s not really the problem. It has to do with the relationship the administration has formed with undergraduates from the beginning, especially with those from underrepresented populations.

Selective schools are in a fierce competition to attract applicants and build a properly diverse and elite freshman class. They have recruited these students with glowing promises and triumphant predictions: “You will prosper here — this is the very best place you can be!” the brochures tell them. Recruiters phone and text underserved groups with exciting accounts of graduates’ success.

Students arrive full of hope and happiness. The last thing deans want is for these youths to become upset and angry. It brings bad publicity and makes the campus look like a place of turmoil, not joy.

These students intimidate the highest officials in a university more than outsiders can imagine. A student at Yale yelling at the professor who tried to reason with her did tremendous damage to Yale’s brand, but the administration couldn’t come down on her without compromising its pledges of inclusivity and anti-discrimination and sensitivity.

This is why, even if they won’t say it publicly, many university administrators most likely welcome the federal government’s heavy hand. President Trump has taken the burden of free speech off their shoulders. Administrators now must stop the illiberalism of the activists as a matter of federal policy.

That means canceling speech codes and punishing disrupters. Schools can’t lose federal funding; they need it to function. Now, they have an answer to the students crowding their offices and storming the lecture hall: “Yes, you must be quiet or you will be disciplined. I have no choice — it’s the law.”