I’d love to believe that’s true. But if anyone expects a new atmosphere of free speech to prevail on the nation’s campuses anytime soon, I’m afraid I can’t be so cheerful.

It is true that something significant is happening here. Wisconsin is known as one of the most left-wing schools in the nation, and a pioneer of speech codes. Yet in the end, the faculty themselves had enough. Several professors had been subjected to investigation. "In one case," the (left-wing) Village Voice reported, "a 74-year-old professor was pulled from the classroom mid-lecture and questioned under the watchful gaze of two armed guards."

It’s also true that Wisconsin isn’t alone. Other schools like Cornell and UNLV are reviewing their codes. Of the handful of student speech codes that have been challenged in court, all have been struck down. Some state legislatures (Michigan, Ohio, Maine) are considering banning them at public institutions.

It’s even true that some people on the left are raising their voices against speech codes. The author of the Village Voice report on Wisconsin leaves no doubt he’s not sad to see them go. Their leading opponent at UW-Madison, political science professor Donald Downs, used to support such codes before deciding that their cost — "fear of intellectual honesty" — is too great. A new book documenting and denouncing such restrictions, The Shadow University, is co-written by a liberal Massachusetts lawyer Harvey Silverglate.

Yet for all this, I doubt that most of the leftists who dominate college campuses have seen — or will see — the error of their ways. Intimidation tactics have now become a matter of habit for them. Among faculty and staff, many have been throwing their weight around since their student days in the 1960s, when they shouted down any professor or other speaker who dared disagree with them. Now they don’t need to stage protest marches (though some still think that’s fun); they’ve got institutional clout they can use to enforce ideological conformity and punish dissent.

Speech codes fit right into that pattern. Forget the left’s claims to cherishing "free speech," diversity," "sensitivity," "tolerance" and the rest. The hard reality is, speech codes come with teeth. Break them and you pay a price; you get fired, expelled, sentenced to community service or re-education classes, or otherwise penalized. It should go without saying that this isn’t the stuff of a good-natured campaign for tolerance and civility. It can only be used as a club.

And the club gets used — a lot. The Shadow University presents literally hundreds of cases where people were punished simply for expressing politically incorrect views — or even failing to express the "correct" views. (At Carnegie Mellon University, a residential adviser was fired for refusing to wear a pink triangle during mandatory "gay and lesbian sensitivity training.")

For all these incidents, there are countless others that didn’t make it into the book. Still, this book — or personal experience — should convince readers of something I noticed many years ago: The campus left consists largely of bullies. They don’t like to think of themselves that way, of course; they fancy themselves victims of oppression waging a romantic campaign against the establishment. Yet on campus, they are the establishment, occupying their own offices of power and intimidating administrators who may not share their enthusiasms. They run the show like an ideological fiefdom, controlling what their subjects may say and self-righteously banishing opponents to the realm of "bigotry." They won’t give up that power without a fight.

That doesn’t mean the fight isn’t worth waging. As the Wisconsin experience shows, the battle might be won at any individual university. Moreover, resisting tyranny and hypocrisy is always worthwhile, whether you win or lose. The effort alone will expose truth and falsehood to many observers. Some (you’ll never know how many) will be emboldened to stand for traditional American freedoms in other walks of life. A few might even make a career of it in politics, journalism or academia itself.