Remember the good old days when the purpose of higher education was higher education? Good times.

The class is called symplectic geometry, a high-level course in mathematics that provides elite graduate students at the University of California, Berkeley, a better understanding of, among other things, planetary motion.

This seems as good a time as any for a Maria Muldaur song,* right? But what does that have to do with free speech and tuition refunds? It’s taught by a prof who feels strongly that it’s wrong for Berkeley to host speakers who are wrong.

But whether symplectic geometry will meet for its scheduled session on Tuesday is still up in the air because the professor, Katrin Wehrheim, is one of dozens of faculty members who announced they would boycott classes ahead of appearances by right-wing speakers this week.

Whether Wehrheim will be wearing black for the occasion is unknown, but she gets paid to teach students, even when she doesn’t feel like it.

So, for students across campus, time normally devoted to studying Shakespeare or quantum physics is being spent discussing such things as how many hundreds of police officers the university might deploy to keep the peace.

To her credit, the new chancellor of Berkeley has chosen to take a stand here, to end the campus sanitization of thought and speech.

The university’s new chancellor, Carol T. Christ, has emerged as perhaps the loudest advocate of unfettered free speech, a paradox because it was the university administration in the 1960s that staunchly opposed the Free Speech Movement on campus, only changing its stance after intense pressure from students.

Ms. Christ’s administration had vowed to spend what was necessary for Free Speech Week to take place.

“Universities are fundamentally dedicated to free inquiry,” she said in an email. “This commitment is fundamental to academic freedom.”

This will strike some as a rather straightforward stance. But some academics believe they are entitled to reinterpret free speech in their own fashion.

At Berkeley, there are both unequivocal voices championing the importance of free speech, no matter how inflammatory, and professors who say lines need to be drawn on campuses. These professors argue that the First Amendment needs to be reassessed for reasons that include the rise of internet trolling and cyberbullying and that some scientific research now shows that hateful speech can cause physical pain.

There is also scientific research showing that icebergs are caused by the patriarchy, but I digress. So the profs who feel entitled to reinterpret constitutional rights in light of symplectic geometry take issue and umbrage with the university’s acquiescence to its legal duty and intellectual rigor by not merely allowing the invited voices of Satan on campus, but spending a great deal of money to protect these speakers, and those who wish to listen to them?

They may well believe that academic freedom allows them to believe as they do, and wrong as they may be, they’re right. But freedom isn’t free, and that’s why they deposit their academic paycheck every couple weeks. Berkeley doesn’t pay them because they’re good looking, but because they have students who pay tuition who need them some teachin’.

But what do the students have to say?

“Ninety-nine percent of us just want to go to class and study,” said Varsha Venkatasubramanian, a graduate student in history whose professors have canceled class this week. “Yes, people come here because they want to expand their experiences. But they didn’t come here for police to overtake their school and to have barriers all over the place.”

Much as there are some ready and willing to take to the streets and harm others in the name of tolerance, some go to college to study physics, not politics. And they (or their parents) pay damn good money for the privilege. If an academic wants to protest on her own time speakers who espouse ideas they find noxious, go for it. But when you’re on the clock, you have a responsibility to teach.

And for the most part, students don’t care what you think about Milo any more than they care to spend their time listening to Milo. And what becomes of students who are denied the opportunity to learn?

How can any self-respecting academic live with themselves knowing that a poli-sci major would say something this inane? This is on you, profs. Do your job.

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