For a university that celebrates diversity and tolerance in every one of its glossy, full-color brochures, the actions were shocking: dozens of University of Colorado students, dressed up as members of the KKK, shouting down a celebrated black civil rights leader.

The year was 1998. The speaker was Ward Connerly. The student government’s paid diversity director led the protesters. Connerly’s message - that people should be judged based on their character and not their skin color - should have been welcome on the college campus. Instead, it was silenced.

Many of these same students, vocal supporters of Colorado’s ethnic intimidation statute, failed to consider the stifling implications of their own actions.

Connerly’s experience was far from unique. In a 2003 on-campus debate in Boulder, one panelist made the fatal mistake of calling America “the greatest country on earth”. For this, he was relentlessly booed and heckled. Other conservative speakers, including Ann Coulter, have received similar responses upon coming to CU. When former Black Panther David Horowitz came to campus in 2000, he was heckled by Ward Churchill, the CU professor who now proclaims his right to free speech after comparing 9/11 terrorism victims to Nazis.

Just last year, CU again proved its disdain for diverse viewpoints after administrators revoked a permit for a group of students seeking to host an “affirmative action” bake sale, a satirical event designed to speak out against policies promoting racial discrimination on the Boulder campus. While the ACLU and major civil rights groups around the country made a stand for the organizers, student protesters shockingly sided with the administrators, unable to see what the ACLU understood throughout the process: To maintain our own access to free speech, we must maintain the First Amendment for all, even when we find it ugly or disagreeable.

With the threat of a federal lawsuit, administrators saw the light and allowed the event to go on.

Student protesters continued their defiance, however. One student, a journalism major no less, called into a Denver radio talk show saying the bake sale organizers deserved to be silenced because their views were offensive, and therefore, didn’t merit constitutional protection.

Compare these typical responses with those received earlier this month by the now-infamous Churchill, when he spoke on campus in defense of his controversial anti-American scholarship. At this event, students offered a 40-second standing ovation, and cheered loudly when the professor proclaimed that despite being employed by a public university, he did not work for taxpayers, Colorado Gov. Bill Owens, or the university’s Board of Regents. There were no protesters, no loud angry mobs attempting to silence Churchill’s speech. The professor was allowed, as he should have been, to speak for more than a half-hour without interruption.

The paradox is puzzling. Today’s university students are reared in a culture where one is taught to believe that free speech is justifiably protected only for those with whom one agrees. Celebrating diversity in Boulder, like on too many other campuses across the country, means celebrating more of the same, not the acceptance of new or different ideas. Here critical thought means criticizing those you disagree with, instead of conducting a respectful debate from which all perspectives can be heard.

When students emulate leaders like Ward Churchill, our Constitution is in serious trouble. While Churchill screams from his perch high atop the ivory tower about his First Amendment rights, he does not believe such rights should be protected for those with whom he disagrees. This was seen just last month, when Churchill celebrated his victory against “hate speech” after he was let off on charges stemming from an incident last year in which he forced Columbus Day parade organizers to interrupt their parade - and thus their speech - for Churchill and more than 200 of his closest friends to take to the street and block their way.

A little bit of advice for today’s college students, and for Ward Churchill for that matter: Put down your placards and turn off your megaphones for just a day. Instead, simply listen. Listen to those you agree with, and, just as important, to those with whom you disagree. Read the blogs of your enemies and the research of your foes. You may actually learn something. In the process, you’ll be taking a stand for something that really matters: protecting one of our most cherished freedoms of all - our free speech.

Jessica Peck Corry serves as a policy analyst for the Claremont Institute and is the director of the Independence Institute’s Campus Accountability Project. She is a graduate of the University of Colorado’s school of journalism.

This editorial originally appeared in the Rocky Mountain News on February 18, 2005.