In the classic British comedy Monty Python and the Holy Grail, King Arthur encounters a landowner surrounded by a mob demanding the execution of what they claim to be a witch. This “witch” is actually a beautiful blonde woman, with a wart-covered rubber nose and witch hat loosely affixed by the witch-hunting peasants, who claim, among other sheepishly retracted accusations, that she turned one of them into a newt.

While this sort of thing happened regularly in the 17th century, I was quite surprised to discover that modern day witch-hunts are still happening today – at Southern Illinois University.

Professor Jonathan Bean of the SIU-Carbondale history department was detained, interrogated, judged and executed by outspoken radical leftists of the SIUC faculty. His crime? Assigning an article on “the Zebra killings” that occurred in the San Francisco area in the late 1970s, as optional reading. The article accurately details the killings, all committed against whites by blacks in a group called “the Death Angels,” then a subsection of Louis Farrakhan’s Nation of Islam.

The forum in which the article was presented was quite appropriate; Bean’s class was titled “Civil Rights and Civil Disorder.” Required readings included authors like Malcolm X, Rosa Parks, and Martin Luther King. Yet, Bean’s colleagues erupted in a letter to the campus newspaper, the Daily Egyptian, claiming that the article was taken from an anti-Semitic Web site (frontpagemag.com) and that it is an aggregation of rumors rather than fact.

In the last month, these allegations have proved false. Frontpagemag.com is no doubt a conservative Web site, but the author of “Remembering the Zebra Killings,” James Lubinskas, acquired his facts for “Zebra” from crime writer Clark Howard.

Furthermore, the truth of Frontpagemag.com’s alleged ties to “anti-Semitism” has been exposed. Lubinskas quotes The European American Issues Forum, “a moderate and thoughtful civil rights organization dedicated to the eradication of discrimination against and defamation of European Americans.”

This reading was clearly not the problem for Bean’s colleagues, who also took out an ad in the Daily Egyptian to trash Professor Bean’s reputation. Even the local American Civil Liberties Union – a traditional advocate of liberal access to freedom of speech – came to Professor Bean’s defense. But like the peasants in Monty Python, these professors wanted a witch, so they made one.

Professor Bean, a self-proclaimed libertarian, is the faculty sponsor of the Southern Illinois College Republicans. For radical leftists who long for the days of the American Communist Party and anti-government demonstrations, one conservative on their staff is too many.

The liberal hypocrisy about freedom of speech must be exposed. These “great thinkers” wave the flag of “freedom of expression” and “academic diversity” when preaching liberal anti-American gospel, but then scream into megaphones the words “racist” and “irresponsible” when a colleague introduces a politically incorrect truth.

Similarly, when Harvard President Lawrence Summers provided scientifically defended studies insinuating that men are more able in math and science, liberals condemned him to the public stocks in Cambridge, but University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill was breathlessly defended in the name of academic freedom after branding 9/11 victims as “little Eichmanns.”

I’ve heard some abominable accusations against the Bush Administration, conservatives and even the United States of America while studying at this University, but never once have I advocated the elimination of the right to free speech for my political adversaries (exception: when their aim is to destroy the country that gives them the right to speak freely). Instead, I recognize their right to speak and defend my position with history, policy and facts. Liberals must begin to understand that the freedom of speech is reserved for all ideologies, not just the ones they agree with.

It was funny when the Monty Python peasants won their “witch trial,” but what has happened to Professor Bean is not funny. Instead of a being tied to a witch nose and funny hat, he was labeled a racist and unfair educator by academic simpletons so out of touch with reality that they can’t see the hypocrisy of their own actions. If “conservative witch” Jonathan Bean could turn liberals into newts, our problem would be solved. Until then we’ll have to rely on history, the truth, and the Constitution to defend his actions.