The initial reaction was understandable but followup is just plain dumb. Lest anyone miss the forest for the trees, you are supposed to dress up as something evil and scary on Halloween. Dressing up as Freddy Krueger doesd not mean you really want to slash a bunch of people to death, dressing up as the devil does not mean you are into Satan worship, and dressing up as a suicide bomber does not mean you are a terrorist sympathizer. I expect groups like CAIR to get their panties in a wad over something like this, on the theory that it promotes stereotypes about all Arabs/Muslims being terrorists. I expect conservatives – with the possible exception of a very recent immigrant who doesn’t know what Halloween is about – to be above it.

UPenn President Amy Gutmann didn’t dress up as anything offensive; all she did was pose with a gazillion students to take a gazillion pictures at a large university party. She didn’t need to apologize, but she did anyway, saying:

“I sincerely regret that my appearance in that photograph was misinterpreted to wrongly imply anything positive about suicide bombers, and I personally apologize to any Israeli, Jew or other non-terrorist who was offended,” Gutmann said.

Oops, I forgot – that was John Kerry’s non-apology apology, not Gutmann’s. Sorry. Here’s Gutmann’s:

Each year, the president hosts a Halloween party for Penn students. More than 700 students attend. They all crowd around to have their picture taken with me in costume. This year, one student who had a toy gun in hand had his picture taken with me before it was obvious to me that he was dressed as a suicide bomber. He posted the photo on a website and it was picked up on several other websites.

The costume is clearly offensive and I was offended by it. As soon as I realized what his costume was, I refused to take any more pictures with him, as he requested. The student had the right to wear the costume just as I, and others, have a right to criticize his wearing of it.

Not sure I buy the part about Gutmann not knowing what the costume was supposed to be at the time of the photo, but there you have it. Not content to focus on that detail (or, better still, to graciously accept Gutmann’s unnecessary and distinctly un-Kerrylike apology), Winfield Myers continues half-cocked, making a rambling, incoherent point Michelle Malkin describes as important:

Claiming that the student had the right to wear the costume is, I believe, a dodge and a moral cave-in to the very forces that made possible his entrance into the party and her subsequent acceptance (at least initially) of his costume. This is not a question of rights, after all, as Penn is a private university and can regulate what its students wear. No one is allowed to attend class or stroll across campus in the nude because such actions would be universally seen as morally unacceptable (or, at the least, socially disruptive). It would violate agreed-upon norms of public behavior. I also doubt students would be welcomed if they wore transparent clothing or pants with the crotch cut out.

Note Myers’s colossal non sequitur: Penn is a private university, therefore students, as paying customers, have no rights. At all. O-kay. Had Myers done even the most basic research on Penn before treating the blogosphere to his pearls of wisdom, he’d be aware that most major universities have advertised policies of protecting speech in much the same way the First Amendment does for private institutions, and that Penn is no exception (h/t: F.I.R.E.). By a cheap (or, to borrow Michelle Malkin’s term, “important”) rhetorical sleight of hand, Myers conflated rights with constitutional rights, and wrongly concluded that the student in question had none.

Myers continues:

What’s missing from President Gutmann’s statement, and from the larger academic community of which she is a part, are moral parameters within which every member of the community must act, short of the prohibition of criminal acts, which this of course is not. This applies particularly to statements or actions concerning terrorism, the war on Islamism, and the representations of those actions.

Actually, those policies (linked above) were set down a long time ago. Just because Gutmann didn’t mention them in a particular statement consistent with them does not mean they are “missing” in any real sense of the word. They do appear, however, to have gone “missing” in connection with Myers’s piece, which lazily assumed that since Gutmann didn’t mention them in this particular instance, they must not exist.

Universities thrive where the free exchange of ideas is promoted above (almost) all else. For Penn to reverse course and adopt the speech codes Myers seeks would be perfectly legal, but it would also be perfectly stupid, which is why they are not going to do that. Like any other business, a university has to sell itself somehow, and let’s face it, “come to my private university, pay me a bajillion dollars in tuition, and I’ll make sure you don’t get any of that ‘freedom of speech’ stuff you have to put up with at cheaper, public institutions” just isn’t a very strong selling point. As president of the institution rather than dictator for life, Gutmann is not in a position to unilaterally change Penn’s policies to suit Myers even if she wanted to – which, Lord willing, she doesn’t.