It looks like Dean Jim Glaser got cold feet about the Committee on Student Life’s decision last school year to restrict The Primary Source’s freedom of speech.

President Larry Bacow informed the Tufts community Monday via email that Glaser had overturned the Committee’s ruling, which forced the Source to provide bylines for all of its future articles. Glaser reversed the ruling in response to an appeal brought by the Source.

In his email, Bacow voiced support for Glaser’s decision and hearkened back to the McCarthy era, when “a number of university presidents in the United States failed to defend the principle of freedom of expression.” Ahem, the Source isn’t exactly a group of oppressed commies… But perhaps the allusion still applies.

After all, freedom of speech is indeed a liberal ideal, one that a college like Tufts should work to uphold. Plus, we OTR bloggers do choose to exercise our free speech in posting anonymously. Also, one might be inclined to give the Source the benefit of the doubt and assume that the magazine had probably learned its lesson after its Christmas Carol, its satire on Islam, and the outrage that followed both of those “articles.” Then again, with the Source of Controversy, you just never know.