Indiana University's temperate response to the affirmative-action bake sale held here contrast well with the response of university administrations everywhere else, apparently. I don't think it's that we're a less liberal campus, but I wouldn't be surprised if our liberals were more pleasant people, by and large, than those elsewhere. Or maybe more of them are the old-fashioned type that believe in free speech and the marketplace of ideas. At any rate, FIRE's press release and Professor O'Connor's weblog single Indiana out for praise:

This fall alone, administrators at SMU, William & Mary, the University of Washington, UC Irvine, and Northwestern have shut down anti-affirmative action bake sales on their campuses, ignoring the groups' right to free speech and expressive protest while indulging the angry reactions of those who would rather condone censorship than encounter a viewpoint that offends them. While admins at some schools have (presumably grudgingly) allowed the bake sales to proceed unmolested, only administrators at Indiana have stood up in defense of the expressive rights of all students at the university: "It is a freedom-of-speech issue. I know some schools have approached these events differently, but prior restraint is not something we would normally engage in," Damon Sims, associate dean of students, told the Indianapolis Star. "This is one of the more significant social and political issues of our time. . . . It is exactly the kind of dialogue that should be encouraged on college campuses."

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