The Chronicle of Higher Education brings news that, at long last, faculty at the University of California will have some "wiggle room to express their political and personal opinions." A dark cloud of oppression descended on the campus 69 years ago, when UC adopted a policy that directed professors to "give play to intellect instead of passion" and to "stick to the logic of the facts." The fear then was that communist professors would use the classroom to indoctrinate their students.

Somehow this policy survived even through the turmoil of the 1960s. But last week, by a 45-3 vote, the university system's Academic Assembly approved the new policy, which does away with the distinction between "interested" and "disinterested" scholarship. As the Chronicle puts it, "The new policy will allow professors to teach about politics and to teach passionately."

In a sense, the new policy is simply a bow to reality. Last year, a graduate student named Snehal Shingavi taught an undergraduate English course called "The Politics and Poetics of Palestinian Resistance." The course description warned that "conservative thinkers are encouraged to seek other sections." A Web site called NoIndoctrination.org compiles bias complaints from students around the country; in less than a year it has accumulated 18 from the UC system.

"The old statement of principles was so outlandishly disconnected to what university teaching is now that it made no sense to think about it that way," Robert Post, a Berkeley law professor, tells the Chronicle. But what's more outlandish, the principle of dispassionate study, or the political hothouses so many of our university campuses have become?