Now that Newt Gingrich has seized the lead in the Republican presidential race, everyone will start going back to scrutinize his words. And there’s a lot of words. I wrote an entire book about Gingrich, and that was 15 years ago. Since then, Gingrich has said a lot of dumb things, but the most relevant to academic freedom might be his 2005 attack on tenure and demand to have all “anti-American” professors fired.

Newt told Bill O’Reilly (who was shocked by his call for such repression) on Feb. 1, 2005:

GINGRICH: But to compare the 3,100 people who died in that attack on 9/11 to Adolf Eichmann, I think, is so despicable, so hateful, so anti-American that the taxpayers of Colorado shouldn’t be paying his salary. I think it’s that straightforward.
O’REILLY: Doesn’t that say to the rest of the world we are an oppressive society because, if we tolerate someone like that, does–don’t–that just strengthens our freedoms here.
GINGRICH: Bill, I can tolerate his saying it, but, as a taxpayer, I don’t want to pay for it. Taxpayers don’t have to pay for lunatic professors to have a salary to miseducate their children. If he’s having classes where he tells young Coloradans that Americans who died from a terrorist attack were like little Adolf Eichmann’s, I want him fired. Why would you want somebody like that paid by the taxpayers?
O’REILLY: I’m not sure that…
GINGRICH: Now, if a private school wants to hire him, fine, let some private school pick him up, you know.
O’REILLY: OK. I’m not sure that he said that in the classroom. If he did, I’d be with you. We give everybody the presumption of innocence. This was an essay that he wrote. We don’t have any reports that he brings this kind of extreme outlook into the classroom. If we get it, I’ll change my opinion. But right now…
GINGRICH: All right.
O’REILLY: Right now, I don’t want to punish the man in the eyes of the world. I want to kind of say, look, we despise him, we shun him, he’s a pariah, but we’re not going to take retaliatory action.
GINGRICH: Bill, I’m shocked at your thought, though. We’re not crushing him. We’re simply saying he…
O’REILLY: Oh, come on.
GINGRICH: …shouldn’t earn a living–he shouldn’t…
O’REILLY: He lost his chairmanship, and now you want him to lose his job? That’s crushing the man. And I’m not feeling sorry for him. I’m just saying that’s what it is. You boot him out of there, that’s — you know, you’re crushing him. But, look, why do you think that a college like Hamilton and a college like the University of Colorado at Boulder would even entertain the man in the first place?
GINGRICH: Because the American left has an entire litany of despising America, talking viciously about America, saying really destructive things. I mean, just watch Michael Moore’s tours across Europe where he slams America again and again and again, and the American left–this is a totally acceptable way to talk about America, and that’s why, I think, it’s a good time to draw the line in the sand and say we don’t have to pay them. I’m not asking for censorship. I’m just saying taxpayers don’t have to pay people who say these kind of hateful and vicious things about America.
O’REILLY : Well, he is a tenured professor. You know that. They can’t fire him.
GINGRICH: But tenure is a purely artificial construct invented early in the last century. It has no long-term meaning. It is not a constitutional right. And somebody who says the things he said, I think–if he’s not prepared to withdraw them and apologize for them, I can’t imagine why the taxpayers ought to pay his salary.

In a Feb 28, 2005 speech at the American Enterprise Institute, Gingrich responded to a question about Ward Churchill with this answer:

Ward Churchill is a viciously anti-American demagogue.  He has every right to have free speech.  And I am for him having free speech by not paying him.  He has no right to subsidize speech, none.  Tenure is an invention of the late 19th Century.  It is purely a social invention.  We don’t need tenure in this country anywhere.  I mean, the idea that Ward Churchill will somehow be deeply oppressed if the taxpayers of Colorado don’t pay him is just silly.  There are 75 whacked out foundations that will pay him for life.  There are dozens of Hollywood stars who will do fundraisers for him.  You know, his life will become a film by Michael Moore. So we’re, we’re not talking about oppression.  We’re talking about what obligation does the society have to fund its own sickness.  And I think we ought to say to the campuses, it’s over.  This idea that left wing professors own the campuses.  The student who was told when they wrote a pro-American paper, “You need psychotherapy,” direct quote, “You need psychotherapy if you can write this.”  That professor should have been fired. And I’m just, look, I represent populism at its most basic level.  I do not believe any elite group has the right to say to the American people, not the nine judges of the court, not the tenured faculty, not the New York Times editorial board, that the entire American Nation is wrong.  Shut up and send the money.  I think we, as a people, have the right to say, that’s it.  Let’s change the [inaudible].  You know, Jefferson basically said every generation needs its own revolution.  One of the revolutions we need is on campuses.  And we have to say, if you’re determined to be viciously anti-American, we are confident your right of free speech will be protected.  I will fight to the end for your right to speak freely.  I just won’t pay you a dime.  And the minute you start doing that, you’ll see just dramatic change. But then we, on the right, and this is what got me in so much trouble in the nineties, I was pretty cheerful about standing up for the left.  That actually infuriated them more than losing the election.  I mean, if I had lost–if I had won the election but I promptly sold out, they’d have been happy.  But I was cheerful about saying, you guys are just wrong.  That infuriated them.  So we need to have the courage to go on college campuses and say, you know, bring out your three nuttiest profs and let’s debate.  We’ll be happy to debate, you know, because they’re wrong.  And then I think we have to say to state legislatures, why are you putting up with this?  Boards of regents are artificial constructs of state law.  Tenure is an artificial construct of state law.  So you could modify, you could introduce a bill tomorrow morning to modify tenure law to say, proof that you’re viciously anti-American is automatically grounds for dismissal.  And it would be over.