BY JOHN K. WILSON

A funny thing happened during comedian Hannibal Buress’s set at Loyola University of Chicago on March 17: The Administration cut off his mic. And then when Buress tried to continue his performance unamplified, the Administration turned up the music to drown him out. Eventually, Buress was allowed to return to the stage and finish his act, as long as he abided by the contractual censorship that caused this controversy.

That contract is a direct violation of the standards of free speech on campus. To start his show, Buress projected the terms of his contract with Loyola: “Loyola University of Chicago is a Catholic university so on the offer and contract we stipulate content restrictions.” That contract states, “For Music and Comedy”: “Content Restriction – Artist cannot have content about rape, sexual assault, race, sexual orientation/gender. Artist cannot mention illegal drugs or the use of.”

Buress began making jokes about the Catholic Church and child molestation, which immediately led to him being silenced. After a break, Buress came back on stage and obeyed the content restrictions, but joked about having his mic cut off. Buress said that he had originally planned to follow the contract, but then he realized that he’d already been paid.

Loyola’s contract is bizarre, and one that no university should ever impose. But it’s particularly strange for Buress because he is a comedian who became famous for publicly denouncing Bill Cosby as a rapist and sparking the movement that exposed Cosby’s crimes—and Loyola wants him not to mention rape?

Loyola also censored the DJ who opened for Buress, Tony Trimm, apparently because he played music with swearing rather than the censored “radio edit” required by Loyola’s basic contract for all music. Trimm wrote on Twitter, “I got about 15 minutes into my set before they cut me. Thanks Loyola. Saving the world one cuss at a time.”

Loyola’s policy is not just repressive, it’s also racist, sexist, and homophobic: Many people of color, women, and LGBT comedians bring identity into their acts, because talking about their lives often raises those issues. No university should ever make race, gender, sexuality, or profanity off limits on campus, not even if the performer is “merely” a musician or a comedian rather than an academic. Loyola’s censorship may be extreme, but it’s not uncommon.

In a recent episode of HBO’s series Crashing, the character of Pete Holmes goes to the NACA (National Association for Campus Activities) National Convention to showcase for the college market. The stage manager warns the comedians, “These kids are super-sensitive” and tells them to avoid “assault, rape, suicide, race,” suggesting that they avoid anything “if they would bleep it on the Big Bang Theory.” It’s amazing how closely this follows Loyola’s contract.

Pete’s girlfriend Ali goes edgy at the event and tells an anti-rape joke, effectively killing any chance at college gigs. Pete does his very clean, non-controversial white guy act with great success, and criticizes his girlfriend: “you didn’t exactly play ball.” But as the episode of Crashing reveals, it’s not the conservative Christian who has to self-censor, it’s the outspoken feminist.

Documentaries such as Can We Take a Joke? and the forthcoming No Safe Spaces argue that left-wing Political Correctness is ruining comedy and repressing free speech on campus. But as Loyola shows us, what’s killing comedy on campus is not leftist Political Correctness, it’s Administrative Correctness. To be sure, sometimes left-wing students will object to something they find offensive, but so will right-wingers. The key issue is the response of the administration, which typically seeks to suppress controversy from ever happening.

Back in 2015, I argued that the attacks of Bill Maher and Jerry Seinfeld on college students for killing humor were misguided. Scott Blakeman, a leftist comic, noted at the time that he had been losing gigs because his clean show that promotes peace was considered too controversial by college organizations. Blakeman recounted how an administrator  “saw me reading the campus newspaper (as I always do to make the show as specific to each school as possible), and asked me not to mention any of the campus news stories, so no one in the audience could possibly be offended.” Even when programming is ostensibly run by a student group, there is usually an enormous amount of influence by an ever-growing staff of student affairs administrators.

Bizarrely, FIRE came to the defense of Loyola’s censorship, writing that “a university has the right to demand preconditions of a performer it hires.” According to FIRE, “Buress was invited by the administration itself…, which is free to place restrictions on speakers it invites. That differs from, for example, administrators imposing restrictions or conditions on speakers invited by students or faculty.”

No, administrators should not impose contractual content restrictions on any performers. Administrators hire many people, including performers, commencement speakers, and faculty. None of them should be censored. And it’s not clear that Loyola’s contract applies only to speakers arranged by administrators, since the contract Buress showed seems to apply to any musician or comedian paid by the University, which would include those arranged by student groups. (Loyola hasn’t responded yet to my query for clarification.)

So what should be done? Instead of falsely blaming oversensitive students for being too politically correct, we need to face the actual problem of administrative censorship and pressure that’s used to silence comedians and many others on campus.

All colleges should adopt policies prohibiting content restrictions in their contracts with performers, and defending the right of performers to express controversial ideas.

Performers and students should reveal which colleges try to secretly impose content restrictions (email me at collegefreedom@yahoo.com if you know of any), so that this can be publicly exposed and shamed.

Instead, colleges should actively seek out controversial speakers and performers and encourage them to push the boundaries and make people uncomfortable.

And if administrators won’t do that (and they won’t), students should create their own campus organizations that are willing to give performers the freedom to offend people. And national groups should help them by going around NACA and organizing tours for controversial comedians and musicians who are not afraid to speak out.

Loyola has made itself the punchline for criticism about repression of comedy on college campuses. But Loyola’s content restrictions are only the tip of the iceberg of censorship on campus.