College students have provoked adults for decades.

During the turbulent ‘60s, U.S. presidents, college officials, faculty and even the National Guard tried to squelch dissent, with abysmal results. The student movement against the Vietnam War seemed to grow in proportion to the tactics used by those in power to stop it. Eventually, the nation saw that the tactics used to muzzle liberal students’ complaints denied their basic rights.

In a weird twist of events at Washington State University, College Republicans claim two assistant professors in the Comparative Ethnic Studies department tried to intimidate them during a rally to support the construction of a 700-mile wall on the Mexican border to fight illegal immigration. Professor David Leonard is seen demanding the student ID from an individual filming him during the Republican demonstration. Professor John Streamas admitted to the Moscow-Pullman Daily News he cussed in the heat of the moment. But he said his words weren’t directed at anyone.

Both professors, who ironically work in a department that promotes diversity, crossed the line when they surrendered to passion. Not only did they abuse their positions as instructors, but they set a bad example for students, including those who agree with them that the Republican rally was racist. Also, they fanned a belief that college campuses are hostile to conservative speech.

If there’s ever a place that free speech should be protected vigorously, it’s at college. Students attend college to prepare for careers. However, they mature and are transformed by discussing ideas from all over the political, religious and philosophical spectrums, too.

The right to express those ideas should be protected – from liberals, from conservatives, from intolerant ideologues of any stripe.

In their zeal to counter the Republicans, professors Leonard and Streamas expanded the protesters’ forum from the Glenn Terrell mall on campus to a national television audience. Interviewed on the “Hannity & Colmes” talk show on Fox News Thursday, the president of the WSU Republicans said that Streamas used a racial epithet against the demonstrators. Kiley Smith said he called them “white S-bags,” as well as “scumbags.”

Streamas declined an interview but insisted in an e-mail that the 24-foot chain-link fence erected by the Republicans was “a violently racist symbol.” Leonard, meanwhile, wrote to the www.cougster.com site, apologizing for his actions and stating he didn’t intend to stifle debate.

Lance LeLoup, WSU’s associate provost for international programs, summed up this matter well when he said the College Republicans had an absolute right to put up a fence and demonstrate and the professors shouldn’t have tried to intimidate them. “It really is a free-speech issue, and free-speech issues are often unpopular,” he said. “That’s not what should happen at a university.”

WSU officials should reprimand both professors and recommit themselves to the basic principles of free speech and assembly.