Free speech in American higher education was sorely tested by three bizarre events in the waning days of September and another incident in early October. Each one has potentially grave implications for free expression and academic freedom, and thus merits closer scrutiny. The first event was the extension, then withdrawal and eventual reinstatement, of an offer of a deanship at the University of California to an outspoken scholar of constitutional law. The second was the lecture given by an anti-Western head of state, a vehement Holocaust denier, at Columbia University, along with a less than cordial welcome by the university's president. Meanwhile, though barely noted, the University of California's Board of Regents withdrew a speaking invitation to an eminent economist who is better known as a former president of Harvard. Finally, just as the dust was settling, the University of St. Thomas, in Minnesota, declined to invite to the campus, as one of a series of Nobel laureates, a celebrated opponent of apartheid in South Africa, but then relented a few days later. The implications of these events for academic freedom is discussed.