In March 1960, the Daily Illini, the student newspaper at the University of Illinois, published a short letter entitled “Advice on Sex” by Leo Koch, a biology professor, that argued that “there is no valid reason 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” (p. 60). Almost four years later, as many Americans, including students and faculty at the U of I, grieved the death of President John F. Kennedy, Revilo Oliver, a classics professor, published an incendiary essay in the magazine of the John Birch Society entitled “Marxmanship in Dallas.” Attributing Kennedy's assassination to a leftist conspiracy of domestic villains and “international vermin,” Oliver declared, “So long as there are Americans, his memory will be cherished with distaste” (p. 133).
Matthew C. Ehrlich's Dangerous Ideas on Campus uses the substantial...
