When it comes to free speech on campus, are students really challenged? America's campuses are, for the most part, diverse and relatively easy-going places, where the excesses of adolescence are tempered by the dictates of the curriculum. But occasionally, the world outside imposes itself with unusual vigor, and the always-vulnerable principles of free speech and diverse thought take a battering.

Most notably, this occurred at German universities in the wake of Hitler's assumptions of power in 1933. Jews, Socialists, and Communists were massively expelled, and their works were publicly burned.

An infinitely less-destructive time was the McCarthyite era in the United States, when Communism and the Soviet Union became objects of widespread fear and loathing. This had some impact on higher education, where a few academics lost their jobs and a larger number kept their more-controversial thoughts to themselves. It had more visible effects on Hollywood and other corporate employers.

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