The University of California Board of Regents needs to do some homework on its own history. Regents voted 8-6 last week to rebuke their own chairman for committing the horrifying act of writing an article for Forbes magazine.

Regents Chairman John Moores criticized UC admissions policy in the article. Study of admissions at UC Berkeley indicated to Moores that the policy discriminates against Asian-Americans in favor of other racial minorities. Moores wrote that he was not speaking for the Board of Regents, but was stating his own opinion.

But that wasn't enough for the three regents who sponsored the rebuke: Judith Hopkinson, Monica Lozano and George Marcus. "It is a question of who believes that article was not damaging to the university because it was a partial argument," Marcus told the San Francisco Chronicle, in a statement showing more ire than grammar.

Moores, correctly, described the rebuke as "political correctness run amok."

It is in the best tradition of higher education for college leaders to write provocative articles about public policy for serious magazines. The unhappy regents seem to prefer timorous silence to healthy discussion of a real issue. That's a very poor example to set for students in a free society.