EDITORIAL: Their delicate sensibilities

Jason Riley, a Wall Street Journal columnist who also sits on that prestigious newspaper’s editorial board, was recently invited by a Virginia Tech University finance professor to give a lecture at the school this fall. But then, when other faculty expressed concern about Mr. Riley, he was disinvited.

But then, when Mr. Riley went public with the disinvitation last week, Virginia Tech officials denied everything, even ever inviting the columnist to speak. But then, Mr. Riley produced the email invitation. So then, Virginia Tech — which previously said Mr. Riley was never invited in the first place — reinvited him.

Sound confusing? Well, not if you’re a conservative given the opportunity to speak on a college campus these days. And even more so if you’re a minority conservative who fails to toe the groupthink line that has overtaken universities and colleges, where the free exchange of ideas should be paramount.

As staffers at The Federalist website wrote Wednesday, Mr. Riley received an email invitation from Douglas Patterson to speak at the professor’s program, “Exploring the Foundations of Capitalism and Freedom.” But last week, according to Mr. Riley, the professor wrote him an email explaining that other faculty members were reluctant to allow him to speak because they were “worried about more protests” from campus progressives.

Specifically, The Federalist noted, there were concerns about issues Mr. Riley raised in his book, “Please Stop Helping Us: How Liberals Make It Harder for Blacks to Succeed.”

Mr. Riley said Mr. Patterson’s email went on to explain that the professor fought but couldn’t sway his peers to allow the speech. The Federalist put it quite succinctly: “Virginia Tech is totally cool with free speech, just so long as it doesn’t come from a black conservative who might offend the delicate sensibilities of cloistered campus progressives.”

On Tuesday, Mr. Riley wrote about his experience in a Wall Street Journal column, which led university officials to beclown themselves in the array of he-was-never-invited-now-we’ve-reinvited-him excuses. School President Timothy Sands on Thursday reversed the decision to disinvite, and the statement about Mr. Riley never being invited was retracted.

The squelching of conservative voices by Virginia Tech and other schools — there are too many examples to count (see Victor David Hanson’s column on the opposite page) — due to concerns about protests only serves as a heckler’s veto undermining the First Amendment. This shouldn’t be the case at any college, least of all a public university heavily reliant on taxpayer dollars.

Virginia Tech got it right in the end. But that the school felt compelled to waffle in fear of upsetting left-wing interests speaks volumes about the health of free and open discourse on the nation’s college campuses. In the future, those who run Virginia Tech and other universities — including Nevada’s institutions of higher education — might fortify their courage in the face of progressive mewling by reviewing the Bill of Rights.