COLUMN RIGHT : The Medicine May Be Worse Than Ailment : Federal power unleashed against campus codes would have unpredictable results for private colleges and companies.

There was a debate the other day at Stanford University about the merits of free speech on campus. It will be shown nationally by PBS on June 6. The debate included such well-known figures as Yale President Benno Schmidt, CBS-TV commentator Andy Rooney, columnist Nat Hentoff and Ira Glasser, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union.

Increasingly, universities are placing restrictions on speech, and one can’t help noting the irony: The student revolt of the 1960s began with the Free Speech Movement in Berkeley. Today, limitations on campus speech are being encouraged by members of the same generation (tenured faculty now) that earlier demanded its freedom. Of 355 colleges and universities surveyed by the Carnegie Foundation in 1989, 60% had already instituted restrictions on speech and 11% more were planning to do so.

Stanford followed suit last year, with an amendment to its “fundamental standard” of student conduct. There is now a point at which “protected free expression ends and prohibited discriminatory harassment begins,” according to the new rule. Speech can be punished if it is intended to “insult or stigmatize . . . individuals on the basis of their sex, race, color, handicap, religion, sexual orientation or national and ethnic origin.”

In the campus debate, former CBS-TV executive Fred Friendly illustrated the kind of speech universities want to prevent. He stepped up to a black sophomore on the panel and said (playing the role of a campus bully): “You ------- stink. I don’t know why we ever let you in here.”

Last fall, a student was expelled from Brown University for yelling anti-black and anti-Semitic, remarks (to no one in particular). The ACLU took the student’s side, arguing that he shouldn’t be expelled on the basis of speech, “no matter how offensive.” But earlier this year the university president denied the student’s appeal.

Dinesh D’Souza, the author of a new book called “Illiberal Education,” spoke at Stanford a few days ago. He remarked that episodes like the one at Brown are very rare: “People aren’t screaming racist epithets at one another on campus.” He opposes speech codes on the grounds that “their purpose is intimidation--to discourage students from discussing a whole range of taboo subjects.” (He cited the admission of minority students with lower test scores and the desirability of affirmative action.)

Conservative Rep. Henry Hyde (R-Ill.), agrees that speech codes are a bad thing. He hopes to amend the 1964 Civil Rights Act to give students the right to challenge the notion of objectionable speech in federal courts. At present, the First Amendment does not apply to private institutions such as Stanford. The ACLU is in unaccustomed agreement with Hyde. They, too, would like the government to overrule speech codes.

Surely, however, universities do have the right to regulate the conduct--including the speech--of enrolled students. The right to speak one’s mind cannot be permitted to override institutional governance. The officers of private corporations, and universities in particular, should be permitted to set their own goals and direct their subordinates accordingly. Otherwise, institutions can be upended.

A reporter hired by a newspaper does not have a First Amendment right to have a sloppy article published, and a quarrelsome employee does not have a First Amendment right not to be fired. The fundamentalist Bob Jones University should be permitted to prohibit swearing on campus, and Jewish yeshivas should be free to impose their own rules against taking God’s name in vain. By the same token, universities should be permitted, if they so desire, to outlaw the discussion of certain ideas (not that they have gone that far yet). Of course, it would be unwise for them to do so; universities are supposed to encourage such discussion, after all.

The speech codes now being instituted on campus are unnecessary and not likely to improve the universities that embrace them. As Nat Hentoff said in the debate: “If a university sets up a code, it suppresses ordinary bigotry. The student has no sense of what it’s like to deal with that.” But trying to use the federal courts to prevent error is itself an error that conservatives usually avoid. For years, the ACLU has argued that speech rights take precedence over property rights. They now seem to have won an important ally in Hyde. “Hyde has been had,” an admirer of his told me. If federal power is extended to the private sector, he predicted, it will be used in unanticipated ways. Better to let the universities remain free to pursue their own policies, and to learn from their own mistakes.