I believe in free speech, but …

Jim Gilchrist, founder of the Minuteman Project, is one of two panelists scheduled to appear at a Thursday forum sponsored by Flipside Productions, an enterprise of the Associated Students of the University of Nevada, Reno.

The other panelist is Miguel Acosta, a member of an immigrant rights organization in New Mexico.

Nicolas Blevins, a 20-year-old political science major and contemporary issues chairman for ASUN Flipside Productions, said the forum is "purely educational" and intended to start a dialogue.

Predictably enough, in an era when the open discussions protected by the First Amendment are held in wide disrespect even by those who should defend free speech most highly -- our college professors -- there are those who intend not merely to ask some pointed questions of Mr. Gilchrist after his speech, but to block his appearance.

"We're hoping there is a way we can prevent his visit to our community," Daniel Perez, an assistant professor in languages and literatures, was bold enough to tell the Reno Gazette-Journal last week. "Gilchrist is part of a vigilante group and of an organization that clearly uses hate speech, and that clearly translates into hate crimes."

A decorated Marine veteran (Purple Heart) who volunteered to fight in Vietnam when he was 18, Mr. Gilchrist came to public attention on April 1, 2005, when he and his followers set up camp in the desert south of Tombstone, Ariz., to draw attention to the problem of uncontrolled illegal immigration from Mexico into the United States.

The Minutemen neither shot anyone nor carried out any "citizens arrests." But the gathering sparked a media frenzy and probably did more than any other single event to push immigration reform to the center of the American political stage, Steven Thomas wrote in a 2008 profile of Mr. Gilchrist in Orange Coast magazine.

Still, the PC crowd seeks to hush up Mr. Gilchrist.

Emma Sepulveda, director of the Latino Research Center at UNR, said she was "completely surprised and shocked" that Mr. Blevins would invite Mr. Gilchrist to the campus without seeking the advance permission of her Latino center or any other Hispanic group.

"I don't want to silence somebody just because they have an opposite view," Ms. Sepulveda told the Gazette-Journal. "I support free speech, but I think hate speech has no place on our campus or any other campus."

In fact, it would be hard to conceive of anything more pernicious and disingenuous than pretending to defend the right to free speech when it turns out what you really mean is: "But students shouldn't be allowed to hear any speech that I don't like."

If college is good for anything, it should be a place where students are exposed to points of view which they may previously have considered to be strange, alien, unfamiliar or wrong.

Harvard University retracted its invitation last month for Mr. Gilchrist to be on a panel discussion on immigration after some students whined that they didn't wish to be exposed to his views. In bold contrast, UNR President Milton Glick said he might not like what Mr. Gilchrist has to say, but "a university should be a place for the open exchange of ideas and a bastion of free speech. ... Our goal isn't to make ideas safe for students but to make students safe for ideas."

Finally -- an academic voice Nevadans can be proud of.