This book focuses on the threats to free speech and civil liberty that have sprung up on America's campuses following the wave of so-called progressive reforms instituted in the late 1980s and the 1990s. The most important reforms included speech codes, broad antiharassment codes, orientation programs dedicated to promoting an ideology of sensitivity, and new procedures and pressures in the adjudication of student and faculty misconduct. Although these measures were laudably designed to foster civility, tolerance, and respect for racial and cultural diversity, they too often had illiberal consequences. Rather than improving the campus climate, the new policies often provided tools for moral bullies to enforce an ideological orthodoxy that undermines the intellectual freedom and intellectual diversity that are the hallmarks of great universities.

Following in the wake of several other books, this book tells the story of how and why this turn of events took place. But it goes one step further than previous literature: this book explores how faculty, students, and even administrators can retrieve liberal principles of freedom on campus through conscientious political commitment and mobilization. I present two case studies of how such mobilization can make a difference, and two case studies of how the absence of such commitment leaves liberal principles in the lurch. My hope in writing this book is to show how liberal principles of freedom and individualism can be restored in a way that adds integrity to the pursuit of diversity in the contemporary university.