Departments Of Justice And Education Take A Shocking Stand Against Free Speech On Campus
From the campus free speech defenders, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education:

WASHINGTON, May 10, 2013--In a shocking affront to the United States Constitution, the U.S. Departments of Justice and Education have joined together to mandate that virtually every college and university in the United States establish unconstitutional speech codes that violate the First Amendment and decades of legal precedent.

...In a letter sent yesterday to the University of Montana that explicitly states that it is intended as "a blueprint for colleges and universities throughout the country," the Departments of Justice and Education have mandated a breathtakingly broad definition of sexual harassment that makes virtually every student in the United States a harasser while ignoring the First Amendment. The mandate applies to every college receiving federal funding--virtually every American institution of higher education nationwide, public or private.

The letter states that "sexual harassment should be more broadly defined as 'any unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature'" including "verbal conduct" (that is, speech). It then explicitly states that allegedly harassing expression need not even be offensive to an "objectively reasonable person of the same gender in the same situation"--if the listener takes offense to sexually related speech for any reason, no matter how irrationally or unreasonably, the speaker may be punished.

...Among the forms of expression now punishable on America's campuses by order of the federal government are:

•Any expression related to sexual topics that offends any person. This leaves a wide range of expressive activity--a campus performance of "The Vagina Monologues," a presentation on safe sex practices, a debate about sexual morality, a discussion of gay marriage, or a classroom lecture on Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita--subject to discipline.
•Any sexually themed joke overheard by any person who finds that joke offensive for any reason.
•Any request for dates or any flirtation that is not welcomed by the recipient of such a request or flirtation.

There is likely no student on any campus anywhere who is not guilty of at least one of these "offenses." Any attempt to enforce this rule evenhandedly and comprehensively will be impossible.

"The federal government has put colleges and universities in an impossible position with this mandate," said Lukianoff. "With this unwise and unconstitutional decision, the DOJ and DOE have doomed American campuses to years of confusion and expensive lawsuits, while students' fundamental rights twist in the wind."

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@SandyHingston
That campus speech code I made fun of here http://www.phillymag.com/articles/penns-water-buffalo-incident-20-years/ ... just became law of the land: http://thefire.org/torch/#15768

Excerpt from Hingston's piece:

Those who dare question whether these offended parties have actually suffered harm are shouted down by the hurt-feelings "sensitivity" industry and social media and news organizations trolling for hits. And the costs of disagreeing with the PC guardians ratchet ever upward--costs that all of us pay.

Penn's water buffalo debacle marked the moment when a remark ceased to be assessed on its merits and instead became subject to the ears of the beholder. Jacobowitz's epithet wasn't racial, but the women shouting outside his window perceived it to be. The content no longer mattered; their reaction, their hurt feelings, did, and that's what the administration acted on in charging the freshman with using a racial slur.

More from her piece:

In case you think what happens on college campuses doesn't seep through to the culture at large, consider the City Controller's Office at Philadelphia's City Hall. After some birdbrain scrawled a lewd comment about an aide and his partner on a men's-room stall, a dozen employees were grilled by a private investigator (cost to taxpayers: $7,746), then subjected to four hours of "Diversity & Sensitivity Training" on bullying and stereotyping (cost to taxpayers: $17,671). Did shelling out $25,000-plus for a sensitivity consultant accomplish anything that a stern "Hey, people, let's not be idiots" wouldn't have?

But sensitivity training has become a huge industry, commonplace on campuses, in the workplace and in government. In one ultra-fatuous example, the U.S. Department of Agriculture spent nearly $200,000 to have a trainer lead employees in repeating such ­farcical mantras as "The Pilgrims were illegal aliens" and "Thank you, white males," as well as shouting, when prompted, "Bam!"

Sometimes, the costs of such "sensitivity" are more than just financial. Remember Major Nidal Hasan, who shot up Fort Hood in 2009? A report on the incident noted that an officer at the San Diego Field Office for the Joint Terrorism Task Force had informed headquarters in Washington, D.C., before the shootings that he thought Hasan should be asked about possible terrorist sympathies. The response from the D.C. office? It "doesn't go out and interview every Muslim guy who visits extremist websites." Besides, the San Diego office was told, the matter was "politically sensitive." Not long afterward, dozens of soldiers were wounded and 13 were dead.