I Am Not Charles? French Attacks Bring Doubts On Free Speech

From the Boston Globe:

Je suis Charlie is an understandable and admirable reaction to the savagery in Paris. But I wonder how much truth there is in it. I wonder how many newspapers would print the cartoons of the prophet Mohammed that made the people who produced Charlie Hebdo a target. 

I wonder how many people around our parts, or anywhere in America, really believe in and would defend, with their lives if necessary, the concept of free speech. 

Many of us are not Charlie. People who you think would know better, some of the best educated among us, believe less in the concept of free speech, especially offensive speech, than in the idea that you have the right not to be offended. 

Most depressing is that many who embody the antithesis to the spirit behind Je suis Charlie are in the academy, in higher education, in some of the best American colleges and universities, including right here in and around Boston. 

It is precisely in the places where robust free speech would be most expected that it is institutionally censored and punished.