IRVINE, CA--Academic leftists cry that, post-September 11, they've lost the freedom to voice ideas critical of America. "But the professors' real concern is not to defend free speech on campus," said Dr. Onkar Ghate, resident fellow at the Ayn Rand Institute, "but to retain control over the universities.
      "Free speech protects an individual who voices unpopular ideas, " Dr. Ghate explained, "but it does not require that others support him. If an individual wants others to finance the expression of his ideas, he must seek their voluntary agreement. Freedom of speech is not the right of a Ph.D. to force others to give him a university classroom.
      "Yet that is precisely what these professors are demanding. They maintain that no matter how much the trustees of a university disagree with a professor's views, they should not be able to fire him. Why? So that professors who consistently teach the evil of America can do so without the burden of having to seek the voluntary consent of those forced to finance them.
      "What makes the academic left think it can get away with this destruction of free speech? Most universities today are public institutions. Critics of the academic left have been calling for the firing of professors who broadcast anti-American ideas, since such views are odious to most taxpayers. But subjecting speech to majority rule, the left correctly argues, obliterates freedom of speech. Thus, it concludes, we must leave college professors alone.
      "But this doesn't follow," Dr. Ghate said. "The truth is that public education as such is antithetical to free speech. Whether leftists are forced to pay taxes to fund universities from which their academic spokesmen are barred, or non-leftists are forced to pay taxes to fund professors who condemn America as a terrorist nation, someone loses the right to choose which ideas his money supports.
      "To protect free speech universities would have to be privatized. But since privatization would threaten the left's grip on the universities, it denounces as "tyranny of the almighty dollar" the sole means of actually preserving free speech on campus.
      "So don't be fooled by the left's cries about academic freedom," Dr Ghate said. "Freedom is precisely what they don't want."