HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Salem On The Thames: At Connecticut College, the outrage machine claims another victim.

Academics like to think of themselves as autonomous thinkers, and academia—meaning literally the protected realm of free speech—gives professors not only the right to speak their minds but also, via the institution of tenure, protection against losing their livelihoods by displeasing those more powerful than themselves. The fact that civil polities treasure safe spaces for free speech attests to their progressive bona fides. Especially in our times, when new social networks can turn ominously feral, one would hope that academics and their institutions, especially small, face-to-face college communities, could return that investment and resist anonymous, predatory, crowd behavior.

Yet mob rule is precisely what happened this past semester at Connecticut College in New London, Connecticut, along the Thames River. Over the course of the past spring semester, philosophy professor Andrew Pessin was driven from campus based on a malevolent reading of a Facebook post in which he depicted “the situation” in Gaza as one in which the Israelis had confined a “rabid pit bull” to a cage, while animal rights activists protested for the poor beast’s release. Although Pessin didn’t specify in the text, he and a commenter did make clear that this metaphor referred to Hamas terrorists, not to the population generally.

But in an attack spearheaded by a Muslim student who in high school had begun a chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine, and a Muslim professor, recently appointed head of the new Global Islamic Studies Program, a small group of activists, given the run of the school paper by its editors, accused Pessin of comparing all Palestinians to rabid dogs and calling for them to be “put down.” Pessin, they claimed, “directly condoned the extermination of a people. A member of our community has called for the systematic abuse, killing, and hate of another people.” The editor who arranged for the publication of all three letters did not ask Pessin for a response in the same issue.

Shock and horror spread through the community, triggering among many traumatic memories of verbal, racial, dehumanizing abuse, and arousing heretofore silenced “marginal voices.” A great cry went up against racists and hate-speakers of all kinds. Racist graffiti, probably written by an outsider, found in the Student Center bathroom, added to the cries of hurt and indignation.

What a pathetic, evil, clown show. Cost of attending Connecticut College for one year: $62,965.