1st Amendment isn't limited to ideas you agree with.

The Union Leader's front-page editorial by Joe McQuaid, questioning the academic/job security of University of New Hampshire Professor William Woodward ("UNH Crackpot Is No Surprise," Sept. 3 N.H. Union Leader) was chilling to academic freedom and a disgrace to the Constitution and the UL's celebratory Nackey S. Loeb First Amendment Awards.

Essentially, McQuaid failed to grasp that, in a democracy, colleges and universities are laboratories of ideas where the theories of the day are challenged, dissected, rebutted and/or proved. Surely we should tolerate the full spectrum ... whether it is the question posed by the former president of Harvard about women's capacity to excel in math and science or the inquiry by a UNH professor challenging the sketchy information spooned out by the White House about 9/11.

In fact, our 230-year experiment in democracy should have taught us not to shove questions about our government's actions into the shadows or deny their right to be aired and discussed.

McQuaid also could have done a little homework before he casually abandoned his support for the 1st Amendment. Did he talk to Joseph M. Phelps, charter member of the Structural Engineering Institute of the American Society of Civil Engineers, or Steven Jones, professor of physics at Utah's Brigham Young University? Did he bother checking in with Eric Douglas, New York City architect and chair of the Independent Peer Review Committee, or Dan Hamburg, former U.S. representative? What about these experts: Wayne Madsen, a former communications security analyst with NSA and senior fellow of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, or Guy Razer, lieutenant colonel, USAF retired?

Who are these folks? This is a partial members list, including Professor Woodward, of Scholars For 9-11 Truth. These and other educators, lawyers, politicians, retired military and journalists are "dedicated to exposing falsehoods and to revealing truths behind 9/11."

At a minimum, McQuaid's paper should have done its homework by examining the profile of the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, the organization that sent a letter to the UNH board of trustees asking for a review of Woodward's contract and tenure.

Was he aware that Vice President Cheney's wife, Lynne Cheney, was not only a founding member of the council, but the council's first executive director. An examination of the council's Web site suggests that its mission is to expose and rid college campuses of faculty who "they" label as political and radical, even as they insist that "their should be a robust exchange of ideas on academic campuses."

Thankfully not everyone is intimidated with the uncomfortable nature of the 1st Amendment or willing to succumb to Bush & Co.'s bandwagon of fear.

Unlike McQuaid, UNH's interim president, J. Bonnie Newman--a nationally respected Republican who worked for both Bush 41 and President Reagan--said UNH encourages "the open inquiry of ideas. For me, there is no doubt that this tragic incident was the result of terrorists who had one objective in mind: to destroy the United States of America, the freedoms we enjoy and the principles that guide our democracy. However, among those principles is freedom of speech."

Maybe McQuaid should get some constitutional tutoring from President Newman. Her response was appropriate, measured and respectful of the 1st Amendment.

Sadly, Gov. John Lynch's reaction was as knee-jerk as the Union Leader's publisher's. The newspaper noted that Lynch called Woodward's theory "completely crazy and offensive" and added: "Although academic freedom is important, if the UNH professor is promoting that view, it reflects a reckless disregard for the true facts and raises questions as to why such a professor would be teaching at the university in the first place."

The governor's comments on Woodward's status may reflect sophisticated focus group politics, but it is lousy statesmanship. If you can't teach Democracy 101 when you govern the most libertarian state in the nation and strut an approval rating of over 70 percent, our very democratic values are in free-fall.

Arnie Arnesen of Hopkinton was a 2004 nominee for the Nackey S. Loeb First Amendment Award.