Saxe is a Penn State education professor and faculty advisor to the Penn State Young Americans for Freedom chapter (which sponsored Parker's speech). He also happens to be a member of Pennsylvania's state board of education. And he has very thick skin.

All that puts Saxe — a reluctant hero, but one who refuses to abandon principle — in a good position to make public universities' selective enforcement of free-speech codes a very public issue for a very long time.

Sabotaging a Star
The hostile reception Parker received last December 3 was nothing new to Penn State. When Ward Connerly, who led the fight to reverse affirmative action policies at California universities, came to the campus last year, his detractors greeted him with a demonstration (led by Penn State administrators shouting through bullhorns on official time) and "Uncle Tom go home" placards.

But Parker's visit caused the liberal network at Penn State to sink to a new low in propriety. Feminist and other left-wing groups schemed in advance to plan a creative disruption of Parker's free-speech rights. (The Young Americans chapter was forewarned because the liberals, in an amazing political blunder, invited the American Civil Liberties Union to the meeting; the ACLU not only declined to participate but tipped the Young Americans off to the impending infringement on free speech.)

When Parker entered the question-and-answer portion of her appearance, feminist demonstrators interrupted by marching to the front of the room, clad in military outfits and blowing whistles, and putting on a 10-minute skit while campus police refused to intervene. After the event, the demonstrators congregated at the front door, forcing Young Americans officers to hustle Parker out through a back entrance.

Adding vulgar insult to threatened injury, Lawrence Young, director of a cultural center on campus, published a letter in the student newspaper, calling Parker an "ideological whore." So much for respectful consideration of each other's opinions, behavior supposedly required of all Penn State staff by the university's code of conduct.

Saxe could take no more, and he began fighting back on multiple fronts. First, he helped the Young Americans students file a formal complaint over the heckling; after weeks of foot-dragging, Penn State pressed charges against four of the ringleaders, only to discover that just one of the four was a currently registered student anyhow.

Next, Saxe fired off a six-page letter to university president Graham Spanier, extensively documenting both the Parker incident and other evidences of a double standard that tolerated disrespectful outbursts as long as they came from the left. "If Hillary Clinton or another woman respected by the diversity set spoke on campus, what would happen if an administrator (or student, staff or faculty member) published a letter to the editor labeling her a whore?" he wondered.

Saxe also suggested that there may be some discrepancy between such behavior by an administrator and Penn State's stated policy of "fostering a humane University community where everyone feels welcome."

Spanier answered by arranging a meeting between Saxe and Penn State's vice president for educational equity, Terrell Jones. While participating in the cordial exchange, Saxe noticed a poster listing a variety of offensive words and encouraging people to "think about it" before saying them. Ironically, one of the words was "whore." Nevertheless, Jones told Saxe that Young had a right to use the word and would not be disciplined for doing so.

What Tenure's Good For
Thanks to his position on the state board of education, Saxe could also mount a third, broader form of counterattack: to demand that the state board investigate the application of speech codes and diversity training on college campuses in Pennsylvania. These are topics Saxe (who specializes in social studies education) knows well, and about which he has been engaged in a long- term battle.

Not that he started out as an ideologue. On the contrary, Saxe says he steered clear of debates over multiculturalism and diversity until 1994, when his "nonview" on these issues was noticed and he was told that he needed to take a position.

It was obvious what position he was supposed to take, especially considering the diversity training Penn State staff and students are required to attend. Saxe says students have told him about roleplays at freshman orientation in which they are asked to assume a homosexual identity and respond to being called unflattering names.

When Saxe didn't toe the line, it became apparent that Penn State's embrace of "diversity" excluded his form of dissent. He was stripped of his departmental leadership position and his summer teaching load, and his salary rank tumbled drastically. He further alleges that recent hiring decisions in social studies education have been driven more by applicants' commitment to multiculturalism than by their qualifications.

"I'm the best reason for tenure," Saxe quips. "If I weren't tenured I would have been gone long ago."

After Saxe was appointed to the state board in late 1997, however, he discovered not only that the board's master plan nowhere discusses diversity, but that it even emphasizes the importance of education in enabling the assimilation of all Americans.

"The authority for universities to have diversity plans is not in state law," Saxe says. "They can run their universities as they see fit, but it would seem legitimate to raise questions about what they are doing, gather data, and evaluate it."

On this premise, Saxe has proposed that the state board examine the diversity plans and speech codes at Pennsylvania's 18 state-run or state-related universities. The state board's chairwoman (who is, coincidentally, a high- level Penn State administrator) has demonstrated her level of enthusiasm for the idea by refusing to put it on the board's meeting agenda.

Although Saxe was appointed by Pennsylvania's current governor, Tom Ridge, he is not seeking to involve the governor or education secretary Eugene Hickok in the fracas. "I can take the political heat on this one," he says. Among his goals: to make all universities list in their catalog the content of any orientation or sensitivity training they require students to attend.

But if Saxe seeks to enlist supporters in the state legislature, a recent precedent suggests that he may well find them. When Penn State considered further legitimizing the gay agenda by offering health benefits to same-sex partners of university employees, the House Appropriations Committee told President Spanier in no uncertain terms that the university could count on having its annual state appropriation of about $300 million a year slashed in response. Penn State quickly backed off.

For All the Right Reasons
You'd think Saxe, who has four children aged 6 to 11, has enough controversy on his plate. But he is also a candidate for the State College Area school board. He jumped into that race after the school district proposed adopting a policy of nondiscrimination according to sexual orientation.

Why is he doing all this? Obviously not for money or career advancement. In fact, it's hard to come up with any ulterior motive for running the painful gauntlet of political correctness in a university town, other than principle. And Saxe has no lack of principle.

"I believe our nation's Constitution has brought us the greatest prosperity any people has ever known," Saxe says. "Freedom of speech must remain one of our cornerstones, and should especially be the cornerstone of a university. And if conservatives don't have it, no one does.