Rest in free speech: Bob Zimmer led the way for universities and colleges to require that all ideas must allowed on campus

The American university — which is to say, the institution most devoted to free inquiry in the nation that, more than any other on the planet, prides itself on protecting individuals’ rights to think and speak and write what they like — has in recent decades lost its way. Sometimes colleges enforce speech codes barring certain types of expression, typically in the name of protecting members of vulnerable groups; sometimes they fire educators who cross ever-shifting lines; sometimes they disinvite speakers who stray from what’s seen as right-minded progressive thinking.

Nor is it just the “woke” left that seeks to constrain the open exchange of ideas, including uncomfortable ones. In Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis has initiated a sweeping crackdown on professors’ rights. Here in New York and elsewhere, some seek to bar pro-Palestinian groups from campus on the ground that they create an inherently hostile climate for Jewish students.

Standing athwart this trend, yelling “Stop” was Bob Zimmer, who died last week. A graduate of Stuyvesant High School, he grew up in the West Village in the 1950s. At a time when Joe McCarthy was trying to hunt down and round up thought criminals, he learned to feel “tolerance in a deep way.” Though Zimmer was a path-breaking mathematician, he left his most lasting legacy as president of the University of Chicago from 2006 to 2021.

There, atop many other impressive achievements, he created a Committee on Freedom of Expression, which in 2014 birthed what became known as the Chicago Principles, a resounding statement that “the University’s fundamental commitment is to the principle that debate or deliberation may not be suppressed because the ideas put forth are thought by some or even by most members of the University community to be offensive, unwise, immoral, or wrong-headed.”

The declaration has rightly been embraced by universities across the nation. More need to do so. And many who purport to honor the ideals Zimmer championed need to prove it rather than repeatedly buckling to the chilling winds of censorship.