Many of us encourage greater sensitivity to the needs and fears of all members of a changing university community and hope this will be accomplished by means other than codes, largely by education itself. To encourage more conscious, self-reflective, sensitive language and behavior is not to tyrannize. To advocate conscientiously constructed codes that address rare and egregious infractions of common decency and civility is not to call for a thought police. In the wider community, zoning laws acknowledge that some locales are inappropriate for some forms of speech and conduct. Defamation and obscenity among other forms of speech are already regulated.
Societies perennially weigh the rights of individuals against the needs of the community.
I am more certain of the latter. The debate over political correctness is obviously political as well as academic. It is important to recast these important educational and cultural debates in less-loaded terms. We can begin by agreeing that concern for diversity, justice, and open inquiry is not merely politically correct but humanly decent.