The results, frequently, are discouraging. Clint Eastwood's blockbuster film American Sniper, adapted from deceased Navy sniper Chris Kyle's memoir, is the latest exhibit.

That American Sniper is a controversial movie is not a controversial observation. It was one of the most remarked-upon movies of last year, and the fevered debate over its portrayals of the war in Iraq, of the Iraqi people (and, by extension, Arabs and the Arab world), and of Kyle himself was difficult to miss. It's that second concern—the movie's portrayal of the Arab world—that has proven particularly controversial in recent weeks, and has left several universities flailing in the face of criticism of American Sniper's allegedly anti-Arab viewpoint.

Given that universities are supposed to be, as the Supreme Court has said, "peculiarly the 'marketplace of ideas,'" recent press suggests that they have been falling down on the job. This has played out perhaps most embarrassingly at the University of Michigan. American Sniper was scheduled to play there on April 10 as part of UM's "UMix" series of late-night campus events.