P.C. Porn

Maybe this is a good sign. In the conservative Collegiate Network's 2004 Polly Awards, the choice for biggest "campus outrage" is a tie between Sex Week at Yale (featuring a talk by porn star Devinn Lane) and a U.C.-Santa Barbara senior thesis paper on "Gay Men of Color in Porn."

The second place winner is the use of mandatory student fees at U.C.-Berkeley to oppose California's referendum on racial classification, which was defeated in October. Third place goes to a false report of "hate crimes" at Northwestern that resulted in criminal charges against the complainant. The chairman of Duke's philosophy department won fourth place by implying that conservatives are too stupid to work at elite universities, and people offended by a Catholic cardinal's condemnation of homosexuality at Georgetown's commencement won fifth.

There are some legitimate complaints here—especially about the campus campaign against Proposition 54, which seems like a worse offense than academic attention to dirty movies. But none of these incidents involved direct suppression of unpopular views, the most troubling aspect of leftish orthodoxy at colleges and universities. Either that's not happening anymore, or conservatives are getting more worked up about porn these days.