Op-ed shows backlash against left in academe

Brian Anderson notes these heartening facts of the modern university:

The number of College Republicans has almost tripled, from 400 or so campus chapters six years ago, to 1,148 today, with 120,000-plus members (compared with the College Democrats' 900 or so chapters and 100,000 members). College Republicans are thriving even on elite campuses. "We've doubled in size over the last few years, to more than 400 students," reports Evan Baehr, the square-jawed future pol heading the Princeton chapter. The number of College Republicans at Penn has also rocketed upward, says chapter president Stephanie Steward, from 25 or so members a couple of years ago to 700 today. Same story at Harvard. These young Republican activists, trudging into battleground states this fall in get-out-the-vote efforts, helped George W. Bush win.

Excellent. But there's still a long way to go:

Needless to say, the university establishment is downright angry about [Students for Academic Freedom]'s campaign--all the more so because it turns the left's own language of "diversity" and "rights" against it. The liberal American Association of University Professors, in textbook Orwellian fashion, declares the Academic Bill of Rights a "grave threat" to academic freedom. In Colorado, Mr. Horowitz recounts, "A student whose professor at a state school threw him out of class, saying, 'I don't want your right-wing views in my classroom,' testified at a legislative hearing that the bill would be a good idea, since it would curtail that kind of behavior. Once the student gets away from the microphone, the chairman of the philosophy department from the state university in question comes up, jams the kid in the chest with his finger, and says, 'I have a Ph.D. from Harvard, and I will sue your f---ing ass if this bill passes.' " A legislator, overhearing the threat from this anti-Socrates, noted: "That's exactly why we need this bill of rights."

Yes it is.