These Brandeis University professors exchanging emails espousing far left-wing views do retain their right to free speech. However, the controversy stems from the fact that the listerv they are using, entitled “Concerned,” is reportedly an official one provided and maintained by the university.

The professors also used the listerv to corral support around a petition to deny Ayaan Hirsi Ali–a Somalia-born women’s rights campaigner known for her criticisms of Islam–an honorary degree at this year’s graduation.

Brandeis University student Daniel Mael, writing for Breitbart, broke the story:

EXCLUSIVE: INSIDE BRANDEIS UNIVERSITY’S FACULTY LISTSERV

According to its mission statement, Brandeis University was founded to “embody its highest ethical and cultural values and to express its gratitude to the United States through the traditional Jewish commitment to education.” The school pledges that its faculty will “bring newly minted knowledge straight from the field or lab to the graduate and undergraduate classrooms.”

But newly uncovered emails distributed to an official university faculty listserv, comprised of a number of well-known Brandeis professors, show the narrow agenda of the professoriate. That agenda was on full display when 87 professors signed onto a petition protesting the honorary degree slated for women’s rights activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali. “We cannot accept Ms. Hirsi Ali’s triumphalist narrative of western civilization, rooted in a core belief of the cultural backwardness of non-western peoples,” the petition stated.

But that was just the beginning. A secret Brandeis faculty listserv tells the rest of the story.

This listserv, entitled “Concerned,” was created in 2002. It began “out of concern about possible war with Iraq.” It contains 92 subscribers, including professors from outside of the university. Participants express their fear and disdain on issues ranging from United States foreign and domestic policy, the “American system,” and “the Israelists,” to “President ‘Obomber’” and “ Hillary ‘Obliterate Iran!’ Clinton.”