Columbia University’s Teacher’s College employs “ideological litmus tests for students,” according to the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE). The civil rights group says the policies of Columbia Teacher’s College conflict with the school’s “written promises of free speech and academic freedom as well as with Columbia President Lee Bollinger’s recent statements on the importance of free expression at Columbia University.”

The university found itself embroiled in controversy last week when a student mob assaulted a speaker invited by Columbia’s College Republicans club. The incident, which was caught on video, involved left-wing students storming the stage and assaulting the speaker, an act that shut down the entire event. It is apparently being investigated by Columbia University, but no punishments have been handed down.

Personally, I doubt that the students will be punished at all, or that the penalty will be so minor as to have no deterrent effect on students inclined to behave like fascist thugs in the future. I fully expect the university to assign a portion of the blame to the folks whose free speech rights were trampled by the mob; after all, the College Republicans had the temerity to express views that run counter to the campus majority.

Just how deeply embedded in Columbia’s culture is the ideological monopoly? At the university’s Teacher’s College, students are effectively required to agree to a political loyalty oath. According to FIRE:

[The] Teachers College’s Conceptual Framework, which represents the “philosophy for teacher education at Teachers College,” requires students to possess a “commitment to social justice.” Moreover, students are expected to recognize that “social inequalities are often produced and perpetuated through systematic discrimination and justified by societal ideology of merit, social mobility, and individual responsibility.”

The term “social justice” has been adopted by the new left after recognizing that the word “socialism” isn’t terribly popular these days. It’s a clever term; after all, what fair-minded, kind-hearted person could oppose social justice?

But, as always, the devil is in the details. What exactly is social justice? The way the debate is rigged on campus these days, social justice means that you have to believe in specific political policies. You must support racial preferences. You must support a massive welfare state. You must believe that capitalism is inherently evil and that government is the only remedy. You must believe in redistribution of wealth.

Is that justice? How can the belief that forcibly taking wealth from someone who earned it and giving to someone who didn’t be considered justice? Where I come from, it’s called theft. It’s grand larceny.

But at the Columbia Teacher’s College, you must demonstrate a “commitment to social justice.” In other words, if you want to be a teacher trained at Columbia University, you must adopt their political beliefs.

“The freedom of the mind is perhaps our most essential liberty. Sadly, Teachers College’s policies include ideological requirements for future teachers,” FIRE President Greg Lukianoff said. “While social justice may sound nice, no two people define social justice in exactly the same way. This policy presents a serious problem for students who define it differently from the university.”

FIRE wrote to Columbia President Lee Bollinger and Teachers College President Susan Fuhrman on September 15, urging them to abandon the “policy of assessing student commitment to controversial, politicized, and wholly personal concepts like ’social justice.’” FIRE pointed out that “the twentieth century well demonstrates that one man’s idea of ’social justice’ potentially is another man’s idea of totalitarian tyranny,” and implored Teachers College to “live up to its public promises” of freedom of thought and expression. FIRE received no response to its letter.

“According to Teachers College, students who believe that merit, social mobility, and individual responsibility are positive values rather than the hallmarks of injustice are not cut out to be teachers,” Lukianoff said. “Such political litmus tests all but guarantee that students will be evaluated on their opinions rather than their abilities.”

While Columbia requires students at its Teacher’s College to adopt the school’s preferred political views, they’re supposedly investigating students who—like the school—tried to impose them on others. If Columbia believes that students can be forced to adopt the university’s political dogma, is it any surprise that the school produces students who believe that they have the duty to act as the enforcers of that dogma?

Make no mistake about it: the environment at Columbia produced the thuggish behavior of that mob. If the school decides to punish those students, the students will only be punished for learning their lessons a little too well.