Christopher Caldwell has written in these pages of the craven decision by Yale to censor a book on the Danish cartoon controversy, forcing the author to remove from the manuscript at the eleventh hour not only the cartoons she was writing about, originally published in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten in the fall of 2005, but several historic illustrations depicting Muhammad. (See his "Drawing Conclusions: A Danish political scientist revisits the cartoon controversy," in our issue of October 19.)

There was less uproar than one might have hoped to see from the academic community, usually quick on the trigger when it comes to denouncing threats to free expression. Thus it was gratifying to see at least one prominent voice raised to the proper decibel level. Sarah Ruden, whose celebrated translation of the Aeneid was published last year by the offending Yale University Press, wrote a bracing letter to the editor of the New Criterion, which we reproduce in part below:

"I believe that some expression of solidarity on the part of other Yale Press authors like myself is essential. It was just too outrageous that the Yale and Yale University Press administrations cut the images from Jytte Klausen's book The Cartoons that Shook the World--a book about images and a dispassionate, useful book that could be objectionable only to radical Islam.