By now it is clear that the so-called Free Speech Rally in Boston last weekend was a bust. No one was fooled by the alt-right using a cherished American freedom as a hook to rally its cuckoo cohorts.

Still, no matter the context in which it arises, free speech is among our most cherished freedoms, and as such the very term is an easy target for misuse.

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

That’s the First Amendment. All of it. On those 45 words stand our most basic freedoms.

The intrepid alt-right dozens spoke freely on the Boston Common and the counter protesters marched by the thousands toward downtown Boston. Peace prevailed. Free speech happened on both sides.

Here are two cases in which free speech was attacked in institutions of higher learning.

Both outcomes were bad.

At the University of California at Berkeley, protesters forced Ann Coulter to cancel a speech. Or they forced the university to cancel it. Either way, she didn’t speak there.

Get this straight. Ann Coulter is among a handful of extreme conservatives — Rush Limbaugh is another — on whom I can rely to repel me back toward the center any time I’m getting too conservative in my dotage. She is easy to detest.

Coulter was to speak on April 27 on the UC campus. But protests and withdrawals of sponsorships won the day. In the process, Berkeley’s administration hemmed and hawed itself into ridiculous knots of rationalization.

At first, the administration of a campus that has 40,173 students said it could not find a space on campus to hold the event, which was sponsored by student organizations. I haven’t been on the Berkeley campus in 58 years, but even in 1959 it was big enough to have a spare auditorium or two for a speech.

Then UC said it couldn’t guarantee safety if Coulter spoke. A bit closer to the truth, maybe, but still a weasel-out. Not long before Coulter was booked to spew at Cal, protesters at a speech by conservative bomb-thrower Milo Yiannopoulos went rogue. Basically, they rioted. The UC police said they had received threats of a repetition if Coulter spoke.

Universities do need to protect people in their charge. But did the administration learn nothing from the Yiannopoulos event? Boston police last weekend said they did not want a repetition of what had happened at Charlottesville. So, they did things differently from the Virginians. And they had nothing close to Charlottesville.

Could the administration at UC not be as smart as the Boston police? And learn from earlier mistakes? Is Cal not an institution of higher learning?

Shift 3,004 miles east, to Middlebury, Vermont.

Charles Murray was invited to speak on March 2. His most widely read and most hated book was “The Bell Curve,” in which he wrote that differences among the races in academic execution may stem from both nature and nurture, to both inherent smarts and the environment in which a kid is brought up.

That clearly implies that some races may be more academically inclined by way of genetics than others. Most social scientists who have peer-reviewed his work say this contention doesn’t hold up. But it is only part of his body of work. The main thrust of Murray’s work over the years has been that many government programs intended to help disadvantaged folks lift themselves up have had the opposite effect.

At Middlebury, Murray’s opponents got most of the seats in the room. When he began speaking, more than half of the people stood up and turned their backs. That’s a really effective protest. I wouldn’t be surprised if students at Berkeley used that method in 1964 when they launched the Free Speech Movement. Irony intended.

At that point, no one had threatened Murray’s speech. The turned-away students read from a script and then started chanting. Twenty minutes of chanting made it impossible for him to be heard by those who had come to listen and perhaps to question. So, Middlebury moved his presentation to a closed room and arranged for a professor to interview him on a cable TV feed all over campus.

When the live-feed ended, Murray and his escorts got into a car to leave but a mob surrounded the vehicle. Very slowly, the car backed out and got Murray out of town.

Compare the two administrations. UC is a state institution. The First and 14th Amendments together prevent Congress and the states from banning free speech. One might think that means Cal as a state school should not ban free speech. But Cal weaseled its way out of a tough spot. And brought shame on itself.

Middlebury is a private school, not bound by the guarantee of free speech. Yet it upheld the idea that a campus is a place for ideas to flow freely, to be considered, discussed, sorted and sifted and for the best to come forward.

Both colleges were to some extent listening to the students. That’s good. But in neither case did the protesting students respect the freedom of speech. That is where the old rule of in loco parentis (in the place of the parent) comes in. College kids are still kids.

Sometimes grownups have to take over and explain how things should be. That might even be part of a college’s mission, don’t you think?

In these three instances, only the Boston police got it right. I guess the old image of the Boston cop as a large-bellied Irish guy with a billy club doesn’t work any longer. If it ever did.

Bob Neal is a retired farmer and newspaper editor who has lived the past 37 years in New Sharon. He finds his political comfort zone in the middle.

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