This month, the administration at Boston's Suffolk University School of Law had to choose between defending our troops overseas or the radical, Soviet-trained professor who insulted them. Most Americans would side with the troops. Not the Suffolk Law administration.

Suffolk Law, which has some strong programs for veterans, participated in a care-package drive for Veterans Day. That so outraged Suffolk Law Professor Michael Avery, a professor of constitutional law who attended the University of Moscow in the late 1960s, that he emailed the entire faculty about it.

“I think it is shameful that it is perceived as legitimate to solicit in an academic institution for support for men and women who have gone overseas to kill other human beings,” he wrote.

That didn't sit well with Suffolk Law Adjunct Professor Robert Roughsedge of Hampton. He did not confront Avery personally about the email. He had a good reason. A major in the Army Reserve, he was (and still is) stationed in Afghanistan. But he let the administration know how he felt about Avery's affront to American service personnel, decency, common sense and simple good taste.

Their reaction? Meh.

Law School Dean Camille Nelson wrote in a statement, “While I personally intend to donate a care package for our troops, I respect the right of others to hold a differing perspective.”

Suffolk's provost and acting president, Barry Brown, gave this namby-pamby statement: “Suffolk University has a century-long history of supporting the free exchange of ideas and robust debate. We respect the right of our faculty members to exercise academic freedom and support all members of our community in speaking freely and expressing their opinions. A consequence of this open dialogue is the articulation of many points of view. As a diverse community, no one opinion or perspective is representative of the views of the whole community.”

In neither statement did the administrators see fit to denounce Avery's comments as hurtful, wrong, stupid, thoughtless, imbecilic, unprofessional or even not nice. Instead, they offered a limp and cowardly defense: He has the right to free speech. As academics, they know that's a non-sequitur.

No wonder Maj. Roughsedge resigned his adjunct professorship in protest. Who would want to work in a place with leadership so weak that the very top administrators could not bring themselves to even lightly criticize such appalling comments from one of their own professors?