They do teach something at Harvard

This prompted a handful of student organizations, including Act on a Dream, to accuse the Harvard Crimson of fraternizing with the enemy. Act on a Dream even launched an online petition, signed by more than 650 students, demanding the student newspaper promise it would never contact ICE again and apologize for the “harm it has inflicted” on the student body.

“We are extremely disappointed in the cultural insensitivity displayed by The Crimson’s policy to reach out to ICE, a government agency with a long history of surveilling and retaliating against those who speak out against them,” reads the petition. “In this political climate, a request for comment is virtually the same as tipping them off, regardless of how they are contacted.”

This is the sort of illiberal censoriousness we have come to expect from the campus Left. But it was met with the unexpected: actual courage and moral clarity.

To the Harvard Crimson’s great credit, its editors have taken a hard stand against the absurd attacks launched against their paper and against the standard journalistic practice of contacting people when writing about allegations against them.

“The Crimson exists because of a belief that an uninformed campus would be a poorer one — that our readers have the right to be informed about the place where they live, work, and study. In pursuit of that goal, we seek to follow a commonly accepted set of journalistic standards,” said Harvard Crimson President Kristine Guillaume.

She added, “Foremost among those standards is the belief that every party named in a story has a right to comment or contest criticism leveled against them. That’s why our reporters always make every effort to contact the individuals and institutions we write about … before any story goes to press. We believe that this is the best way to ensure the integrity, fairness, and accuracy of our reporting.”

This unblinking defense of free speech and good journalism is like a breath of fresh air, especially when compared to past examples of cowardly campus officials surrendering to even the most ludicrous demands from angry and unreasonable student mobs.

“At stake here, we believe, is one of the core tenets that defines America’s free and independent press: the right — and prerogative — of reporters to contact any person or organization relevant to a story to seek that entity’s comment and view of what transpired,” Guillaume added.

And here’s another point to the Crimson’s credit: Guillaume took the time in her essay to clearly and forcefully explain why free speech, pluralism, and the norms of journalism are important. This is something our fellow conservatives sometimes neglect.

Too often, when conservatives or moderates see the illiberal Left in action, we scold them for rejecting the principle of free speech, rejecting pluralism, rejecting tolerance of unpopular opinions. But that’s not a criticism to their ears. They do reject those principles as oppressive tools of the patriarchy. They are very clear that the ground rules by which American civic life has played for centuries are ground rules they hate.

What’s needed in response is something more thorough, and more robust. One needs to speak to those, particularly among the young, who haven’t bought into the virtues of pluralism, free speech, open debate, and liberalism rightly understood. We need to convince them that if they want social peace, if they want to protect the rights of individuals and communities, then they need to tolerate even those ideas they reject.

The Harvard journalists made exactly that defense. It seems they are learning something there after all.