The suppression of jokes on US campuses

Yet paradoxically the First Amendment is especially necessary in America where in many universities there is only freedom of speech in a purely and narrowly formal sense; anyone who offends against political correctness particularly in a semi-public context is liable to be immediately chucked out without any regard for consequences for him or her, due process or proportionality. In one case a student was expelled during 'Gay Pride Week' for putting up a notice announcing 'Bestiality Pride Week'. It is a good joke and like all jokes ambiguous. As I read it I thought of the injustice of Leviticus, of Blackstone and of the unfair way in which lonely shepherds in Ceredigion have been treated by the law. The gay priders cannot have it both ways. Their parades are enormous fun with men dressed up as nuns called the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, uniformed gay sheriffs in their regular police cars and S.M. lesbians in full gear proclaiming 'Black and Blue is Beautiful'. However, those who live by parody cannot complain when they in turn are parodied. However, my main target is a college administration that could act in such a draconian way; the U.S. courts thought so too and the student was eventually reinstated on the grounds that his freedom of speech had been violated. Yet he had to suffer the stress, uncertainty and cost of expulsion and of having to take legal action. It is quite simply wrong to treat individuals like that. It is not merely unacceptable, it is wrong. Yet he could have put up pictures of the political murderers Stalin or Mao or Che Guevara and no one would have objected. I kept a picture of Lenin in my window for many years as an ironic statement of my contempt for him but none of the gullible ones who took it seriously ever complained.  Mass murder of the innocent is, it would seem, more acceptable than jokes. I can remember some of my Marxist-Leninist colleagues at the University of Leeds treating with derision and contempt a demonstration by Ukrainians (some of whose entire families had been murdered) against a concert by Soviet musicians, yet they would have been horrified if I had told them a joke about squareheads. 

How much does a Ukrainian haircut cost?
Four Pounds. A pound a corner.

Soviet translator: The People's International Friendship String Quartet is going to perform for us all tonight. Let us welcome Comrade Karapetian, Armenia, Comrade Abdurshidov, Uzbekistan, Comrade Litovkina, Russia and Comrade Rabinovitch, violin. 

A further nasty incident occurred in America in 1995 when two college freshmen put up on the internet a series of jokes called '75 Reasons why Women should Not Have Freedom of Speech'. Death threats were sent to the jokers and one person declared publicly 'We want them to pay for what they did'. While it is common for those who reject entire categories of jokes to make the claim that jokes are a covert form of aggression, though they are not, no one seems to have commented on the quite pathological aggression of those who object to such jokes. Is it really normal or 'acceptable' to send death threats to first year students?

Decent people don't do that kind of thing. Death threats are a bit strong. It is fair enough to make fun of groups of people but seriously to threaten particular individuals is another matter altogether.