In order to appease campus radicals, all sorts of new ideologically oriented courses, programs and departments were created, with an emphasis on teaching victimhood and resentments, often hiring people whose scholarly credentials were meager or even non-existent.

Such courses, programs, and departments are still with us in the 21st century -- not because no one recognizes their intellectual deficiencies but because no one dares to try to get rid of them.

One of the rare exceptions to academic cave-ins around the country during the 1960s was the University of Chicago. When students there seized an administration building, dozens of them were suspended or expelled. That put an end to that.

There is not the slightest reason why academic institutions with far more applicants than they can accept have to put up with disruptions, violence or intimidation. Every student they expel can be replaced immediately by someone on the waiting list.

In case of more serious trouble, they can call in the police. President Nathan Pusey of Harvard did that in 1969, when students there seized an administration building and began releasing confidential information from faculty personnel files to the media.

The Harvard faculty were outraged -- at Pusey. To call the cops onto the sacred soil of Harvard Yard was too much.

It just wasn't politically correct. And, as a later president of Harvard, Lawrence Summers, could tell you, being politically correct can be the difference between remaining president of Harvard and having to give up the office.

Authority in general, and physical force in particular, are anathema to many among the intelligentsia, academic or otherwise. They can always think of some "third way" to avoid hard choices, whether on campus, in society, or among nations.

Moreover, they have little or no interest in the actual track record of those third ways. Having to learn to live with intimidation by their own students is one of the consequences.