I agree with most of your points. You should send this to Politically Speaking! Anyway, yes, I was crying in this piece (the subtitle) because I was thinking of how much I love freedom of speech, and how much I have defended it, as you seemingly have, for years. My title reveals no conclusion - it describes what I was doing. Thinking about it. Considering a few reasons pro and cons, and weighing them in an informal bloggosphere kind of way. Not drawing a conclusion.

I really like your points about ideology. Yes, the most important thing for a philosopher to do in a classroom is show folks how to think, not what to think. (I'm particularly troubled by the recent attacks on Peter Singer.) I do think ideologies can bring down empires. I suspect that acting on the principle of teaching our students how to think and not what to think is well-bound up in an ideology or two. All I'm saying here is that the separation of form and content is not always neat and tidy. And this is no reason to just abandon free speech. (Or appoint me the arbiter of what can and cannot be said -- sweet Jesus, no!) I just want to recongize that being committed to teaching critical thinking almost necessarily implies that the teacher is participating in an ideology - one that values critical thinking.