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You would think that kind of money would buy some tolerance and open-mindedness, perhaps a nod toward academic freedom. Kids at Middlesex walked out of class last week, to protest what they called their schools weak leadership.

Tolerance and open-mindedness seem to be at the heart of an MIT initiative launched Monday. Dubbed Real Talk For Change, the more than 200 community conversations offered through an online portal, realtalkforchange.org, are aimed at, as my colleague Meghan E. Irons put it in her story about the new initiative, fostering conversations that will help prompt future community dialogues about the lived experiences of everyday Bostonians, particularly those in marginalized communities.

But what about marginalized scientists?

Last month, MIT canceled a prestigious lecture by Dorian Abbot, a University of Chicago geophysicist. Abbots lecture was about science, not his well-publicized opposition to the way universities are increasing diversity on campus, views that have drawn the ire of his critics.

Robert van der Hilst, head of MITs Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences department, was unmoved by those, especially scientists, who complained that canceling Abbots lecture flew in the face of academic freedom.

As van der Hilst sees it, for all the talk about academic freedom, MIT has the freedom to pick who they want to speak on campus.

Indeed they do. But that ignores the real point: Should scientists empirical views on science be censored because of their unrelated, subjective theories on politics or social policy?

No, of course not, said Harvey Silverglate, the Cambridge civil libertarian who with co-author Alan Charles Kors sounded the alarm 23 years ago with their book The Shadow University: The Betrayal of Liberty on Americas Campuses.

This phenomenon, of shutting down speech on campuses, is not new; its just getting worse and worse, Silverglate said.

He contends that elite schools like Middlesex and universities like MIT are run by midlevel bureaucrats who are afraid of their own shadows. The great marketplace of ideas is being shut down by midlevel bureaucrats.

Silverglate also finds it ironic that Abbot is a tenured professor at the University of Chicago, where in 2014 the university adopted the so-called Chicago Principles, which protect the right of faculty and students to engage in speech that some might consider offensive.

According to the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, 82 colleges and universities have adopted the Chicago Principles or something akin to them, including Boston University, Suffolk University, Brandeis University, and Smith College.

The first university to adopt them after Chicago, Princeton, invited Abbot to speak there after MIT canceled his lecture. The speech took place last Thursday, when Abbots speech at MIT was originally scheduled.

In introducing Abbot, Princeton professor Robert P. George said, We believe that one of the enduring principles in our tradition of civic life, civic liberty, is free speech and academic freedom. And that is why we are hosting Dr. Abbots lecture.

More than 30 years ago, when he was an undergraduate at MIT, Adam Dershowitz challenged MITs policies on censorship, which became a case study in The Shadow University. He was brought up on disciplinary charges, which were ultimately dropped.

But, even as he went on to get his masters and PhD at MIT and became an engineer, the university continued to censor speech.

He agrees with Silverglate that censorship at MIT and other universities where you would think academic freedom would be jealously guarded has gotten worse, not better in the intervening years.

Things should have changed by now, he said.

Kevin Cullen is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at kevin.cullen@globe.com.

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The cost of censorship - The Boston Globe