In my line of work, not surprisingly, the First Amendment's guarantees are important.

So free speech is a high priority. And if speech isn't free on a university campus, a place dedicated to unbridled inquiry and the accommodation of wildly divergent opinions, then where is it?

The question of free speech and its boundaries have nagged at universities for generations. Academic freedom has been a hard-won and often assailed hallmark of the academy. Just as surely, that freedom has been always at risk.

Here in North Carolina, we had one of our most odious confrontations with the concept of free campus speech in the 1960s, when the Speaker Ban Law prohibited anyone with Communistic leanings or background from speaking on state university campuses.

At UNC, famously and commendably, the community fought back by posting a left-wing speaker, Herbert Apthecker, at the town edge of the low stone wall that bounds the Chapel Hill campus as it meets Franklin Street.

There, throngs stood on campus and listened to the "off-campus" talk.

Today, partisans of right and left find reasons to decry threats to open, free speech on campuses. It should be noted that here in the Durham-Chapel Hill area, the responses have largely been not just positive, but outstanding.

A few years ago, Duke University stood steadfastly by its position as host of a Palestinian student group conference -- and turned the tumult into an opportunity to explore the emotional schisms surrounding Israeli and Palestinian positions.

This past fall, Chancellor Holden Thorpe and his administration deflected raucous protests against a conservative speaker who was shouted down from speaking. Later speakers sponsored by the same conservative group spoke to sometimes hostile but always civil audiences.

But despite our local strengths, we can't be oblivious to the furor surrounding free speech on American campuses today.

The American Association of University Professors sounded an alarm in a recent position paper. "A number of recent incidents suggest that our long-standing commitment to the free exchange of ideas is in peril of falling victim to a spreading fear of violence," that group warned in a statement of principle.

A number of exhibits or productions had been stymied, the group said, by threats of violence. The catalytic event was a decision by Yale University Press to remove images of Mohammed from a book, "The Cartoons that Shook the World," whose subject was -- those images.

The AAUP statement makes a clear-cut case for resisting the urge to soften or bury an academic message because of popular pressure. And local and national episodes make clear the threats come from left and right.

"The failure to stand up for free expression emboldens those who would attack and undermine it," the group said in a statement.

It goes on to argue:

"It is time for colleges and universities in particular to exercise moral and intellectual leadership. It is incumbent on those responsible for the education of the next generation of leaders to stand up for certain basic principles: that the free exchange of ideas is essential to liberal democracy; that each person is entitled to hold and express his or her own views without fear of bodily harm; and that the suppression of ideas is a form of repression used by authoritarian regimes around the world to control and dehumanize their citizens and squelch opposition."

How true that is, and it holds just as much truth that the suppression of ideas is wrong, regardless of whether those ideas from the left or from the right of the political spectrum.

In the end, it's hard to argue with the words of Benjamin Franklin cited in the AAUP "call for action:"

"To paraphrase Ben Franklin, those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, will get neither liberty nor safety."

How true, and let us, to paraphrase another revolutionary -- who failed to practice his own tenets -- let a thousand flowers bloom.

Bob Ashley is editor of The Herald-Sun. Contact him at (919) 419-6678 or by e-mail at bashley@heraldsun.com.