Memo to incoming freshmen at the University of Chicago: Grow up!

That is essentially the message from the university’s dean of students, whose welcome letter to students raced around the internet last week. In the politest of terms it put students on notice that their campus is short on intellectual “safe spaces” — that their professors will not be issuing trigger warnings to protect their fragile feelings and that the university is not in the habit of rescinding invitations to campus speakers, no matter how controversial.

It was a breath of fresh air amid a broader campus climate in this country that is choking with political correctness — where free expression is willingly sacrificed in an effort to cocoon sensitive students.

Of course when a university’s decision to not go to extreme lengths to coddle its student body is considered news, well, it’s clear the rest of academia has gone around the bend.

The letter won a collective “Amen!” from those who understand that colleges and universities are meant to be laboratories of intellectual exploration, where individual views should be discussed and debated, tested and challenged.

Instead, too often, they’ve become fenced-in playgrounds for very tall children, with educrats assuming the role of the overbearing parent setting strict limits on how students may play. In the same week that the U of Chicago dean wrote his letter, for example, Princeton issued guidelines that discourage the use of “gender-based words.”

Universities that swaddle their students in bubble wrap — usually at the behest of the students themselves — are not fulfilling the duty to prepare them for the world off-campus. Good for the University of Chicago for bucking the ridiculous trend.