First Amendment and free speech on campus

As I sip coffee and read the the campus newspaper, I am drawn to the front page news story on the "First Amendment Week" with the following quotes in bold:

The First Amendment is the bedrock of our rights, since it is theoretically the foundation of our ability to think, gather and communicate freely ...

Profound it will be if only it were consistent with how the two faculty identified in the report actually practiced  it.

While gushing with such rhetoric, these advocates for free speech did their best to make sure I would not have any on the same campus!

As I blogged before:

I don't have any free expression on campus here.  A few years ago, the faculty union's president wrote in an email to me:

join the union and go through the Bargaining Team.  If not, then please shut up 

I suppose we ought to appreciate the politeness in "please shut up" and not merely "shut up" :)

The in-coming union president at that time wrote in an email to me:

I think you should apologize for your self-serving attempt to mislead the faculty

A few months after all these, another faculty colleague walked into my office, closed the door behind him and proceeded to advise me on how I ought to respect the "hallway culture" and by not following that bottom-line, I had essentially pissed them off.  When I reminded him about my freedom of speech, his reply was hilarious: "I knew even before coming to your office that you would say these things."

Oh well, "Brutus is an honourable man; So are they all, all honourable men."

Maybe they should have celebrated First Amendment Weak!