In the wake of campus protests across the country, the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) and the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) have issued statements, which should serve as reminders regarding the role of colleges and universities and the duties of administrators and faculties.
 
An excerpt from the ACTA article:

A culture of coercion, one which intimidates those with a different view, and finds offense literally everywhere, perverts the ethics of higher education. The popularity of trigger warnings and the attention devoted to perceived affronts —micro-aggressions—are symptoms of a dangerous misunderstanding that the focus of college should be therapeutic, not academic.

Campuses are degraded when craven administrators allow students to shout down invited speakers or when they give in to pressure and “disinvite” a legitimately scheduled speaker.  College presidents who fail to sanction demonstrators who disrupt the school library or who occupy campus buildings are shirking their responsibilities. They are incapable of educating students for citizenship in a free society.

The American college campus has become a place where too many students, faculty and administrators want freedom from speech, not freedom of speech; where force—not reason—is viewed as the avenue to change.

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College is not an expensive country club or a therapist’s couch. It is a rare and special place of freedom to teach and freedom to learn. By fulfilling its mission of the unrelenting pursuit of truth, upheld by rigorous academic standards, it molds the characters and values of coming generations. That is its unique “safe space,” and we look toward campus leaders to cleave to those values.

An excerpt from the FIRE article:

The principles of free expression enshrined in the First Amendment guarantee us all the freedom to peacefully protest and to answer speech with more speech. FIRE reminds students, faculty, and the public at large that the national conversation sparked by this fall’s protests is itself an illustration of the crucial roles that free speech, pluralism, and academic freedom play in our society.

FIRE opposes calls to reduce, eliminate, or violate the freedoms protected by the First Amendment, or by private institutions’ comparable promises. FIRE’s unswerving dedication to the principle of free expression is the very reason that we believe that even those arguing against free expression should be free to do so. At the same time, for the “marketplace of ideas” to survive on campus, calls for punishment of speech and enforced political orthodoxy must not succeed. FIRE will fight to ensure that they do not.

While students and faculty may call for censorship, college administrators and other agents of the college (including student government bodies) may not accede to any such demands. Students, on their own, do not have a responsibility to honor the Constitution or a college or university’s promises about freedom of expression. The same cannot be said for those who represent the institution. Institutionally, colleges and universities must refuse to give into demands that would compromise their ability to be a place where community members, as the Supreme Court wrote in Sweezy [v. New Hampshire], “remain free to inquire, to study and to evaluate, [and] to gain new maturity and understanding [; otherwise our civilization will stagnate and die.]”