Roger Ebert was right: Free speech, Twitter, and the Holocaust denier protected by the University of Illinois — salon.com

One thing you learn when you research the history of intolerance: There is nothing new under the sun. That applies no less to would-be institutional defenders of civility as it does for the haters (and in not a few cases, the freedom-fighters and truth-tellers) whose intemperate or untimely utterances so offend them. As the political theorist Mark Rupert just reminded me, you don’t have to look any further than the University of Illinois to see that this is true. Back in 1960, a biology professor named Leo Koch became a lightning rod when he penned a letter to the student newspaper in response to an article about the scandal of “heavy petting.” “There is no valid reason,” he wrote to The Daily Illini, “why sexual intercourse should not be condoned among those sufficiently mature to engage in it without social consequences and without violating their own codes of morality and ethics.”

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