We noted last week that University of Montana law prof Kristen Juras had called for censorship of the U of M student newspaper, saying that its sex advice column “affects my reputation as a member of the faculty.”

She was almost right. The sex advice column wasn’t having any effect on her reputation. Dozens of campus papers have such columns, and nobody holds tax law professors responsible for the content of a school’s student newspaper anyway. If she’d just tut-tutted to herself, her reputation would have been just fine.

But she didn’t, and it isn’t.

Juras’ name now appears in eight of the top ten Google hits for ” ‘University of Montana’ sex.” Most of the top hits for her name are references to this ugly story.

So Professor Juras needs help. And Patrick from Popehat (presently number four in a Google search on “Kristen Juras”) is willing to step in:

I’m gravely concerned about Professor Juras’s ignorance of First Amendment precedent such as Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District, 393 U.S. 503, 89 S. Ct. 733, 21 L. Ed. 2d 731 (1969), which holds that speech by students in public schools may be infringed only on a showing that it will disrupt the orderly running of the school, or is indecent.  (Professor Juras does not make such a contention concerning Ms. Davis’s columns.)  I’m concerned that, to the extent that what Professor Juras really seeks is to have the University censor one student, she is asking for constitutionally prohibited viewpoint discrimination under the guise of sometimes permitted content discrimination.

Moreover, and this is what really concerns me, as far as Professor Juras’s reputation is concerned, I believe that any time someone writes, “I respect free speech, but…” and then goes on to ask for censorship, that person looks like an ass, a fool, and a hypocrite.

And so, in order to protect Kristen Juras’s reputation, I am asking to be appointed as an independent monitor at the University of Montana School of Law, with authority over the writings and speech of assistant professors who teach property, business, and tax, and a requirement that all such writings and speech be cleared with me, beforehand, to the extent that they touch on political or legal topics outside the subjects of property, business transactions, and tax.  (Because God, I don’t want to have to read that stuff.)

Since Kristen Juras, evidently, is unwilling to protect her own reputation, which is now that of a fool, someone else will have to do it.  For her own damned good.

He’s a giver, that Patrick.