To censor or not to censor?

The Washington Post reports:

Charlie Hebdo censorship controversy at the University of Minnesota

Colleen Flaherty (Inside Higher Ed) reports (see also this Minnesota Daily story). This is very troubling stuff, involving a leading public university and a demand to take down posters describing a serious academic panel. Here’s my understanding of the matter, from the Inside Higher Ed story (which you should read) and from other sources:

1. Several professors put together a panel on the Charlie Hebdo murders; the panel was promoted with the flyer quoted above, which includes the cover of the first post-murder issue, with a “CENSORED” stamp added on top of it. “The flyer was published on the various unit sponsors’ websites and elsewhere on campus.” The event, according to the participants, drew a lot of attendees, and apparently wasn’t disrupted in any way.

2. But then, after the event, “eight people — four students, a retired professor, an adjunct professor and two others from outside the university — contacted equal opportunity personnel to express concern that the flyer ‘featured a depiction of Muhammad, which they and many other Muslims consider blasphemous and/or insulting.’” The university also got a petition from 260 students and staff members, plus about 45 others, which condemned the flyer as “very offensive” and said it “violated our religious identity and hurt our deeply held religious affiliations for our beloved prophet (peace be upon him). Knowing that these caricatures hurt and are condemned by 1.75 billion Muslims in the world, the university should not have recirculated/reproduced them.”