Before we turn to the brouhaha over free speech at Brandeis University, let’s remember the distinction between “civil rights” and “academic inquiry.”

Two weeks ago we published a story about Sister Margherita Marchione, a Morristown nun who wants to rehabilitate the reputation of Holocaust-era pontiff Pius XII. Walter Ruby reported that the nun had sought an opportunity to speak to members of United Jewish Communities of MetroWest NJ but that her invitation was rebuffed “at the urging of Barbara Wind,” director of the Holocaust Council of MetroWest.

Last week we received a letter from Cheryl F. Kleefeld, who identified herself as a member of Pave the Way, an organization that supports Sister Margherita’s efforts. Kleefeld asserts that Wind “abrogate[d] the civil rights” of the nun by denying her an opportunity to speak. Kleefeld cites the First Amendment, adding that the amendment “covers Sister Margherita’s right to speak.”

It certainly does, but not at a Jewish federation or any other nonprofit organization like it. The First Amendment prevents the government from making or enforcing laws that abridge the freedom of speech. Even organizations that accept government grants are not required to open their forums to all comers; I’d love to dance the role of Drosselmeyer in The Nutcracker, but that doesn’t mean the NEA-supported American Repertory Ballet has to accept me.

As Wind explains in a letter to the editor this week , she “did not find Sister Margherita’s scholarship credible” and counseled against giving her a forum. Kleefeld can disagree with that assessment, but Jewish organizations have every right to decide who does and doesn’t get to speak under their auspices.

If I were Kleefeld, I would drop the talk of “civil rights” and instead stress the spirit of “academic inquiry.” She can’t argue that the nun has a right to speak, but she can certainly argue that a Jewish organization might expand its understanding of a controversial subject by hearing an alternative view.

The degree to which Jewish-sponsored institutions support the airing of controversial views is exactly what’s being debated at Brandeis. In recent weeks the Massachusetts university has faced the wrath of donors who felt the school betrayed its Jewish character in allowing Jimmy Carter to speak on campus at the invitation of a student-faculty group. In essence, many argued, the school bestowed its “hechsher” on Carter and, by extension, his odious comparison between Israel and South Africa’s former apartheid regime.

According to the New York Jewish Week, the school has set up a new and apparently unprecedented process to evaluate speakers invited to speak on the Middle East. Student groups on the Right and Left immediately tested the process by inviting speakers considered controversial on opposite ends of the ideological spectrum: on the Right, Daniel Pipes, a steady critic of militant Islam, and on the Left, Norman G. Finkelstein, who asserts that the Jewish community exploits the Holocaust in order to win reparations and sympathy for Israel.

Supporters of the vetting process assert that a private university like Brandeis has the right to control the messages it deems appropriate to its educational mission. As Jewish history professor Jonathan Sarna told the Jewish Week, “Part of our job is to help students figure out what bad books are, and what good books are; what is a bad scholar, and what is a good scholar.”

But does that job extend to preventing students from reading the bad books or hearing a bad scholar? It seems to me that academic inquiry demands hearing a broad array of voices, from a right-wing Israeli politician like Avigdor Lieberman to an advocate for Palestinian human rights like Rabbi Arik Ascherman. Both are reviled by their ideological opposites, and yet both would certainly offer a view of Israeli reality, refracted through their separate biases. Offering these disparate views sounds like part of the educational mission of a nondenominational, “Jewish-sponsored” university like Brandeis.

No university needs to provide a forum to “every crackpot,” as Sarna put it. But the Brandeis vetting process would seem more admirable if the school listed some criteria. For example, would speakers extend the freedom of inquiry to their ideological opponents? Are speakers forthright about their agendas and transparent about their sources of income? Do they arrive at their positions according to the professional standards of their chosen professions or areas of inquiry?

For now, it seems its main job is to anticipate what will and won’t anger donors. That’s not necessarily a bad thing — philanthropy is another form of free speech, and people who care enough to support an institution deserve to express the values they think the institution should uphold.

I can only hope, though, that some of those donors would take a step back from their revulsion at Carter to assess unemotionally what damage was and wasn’t done by his appearance. The invitation defused Carter’s libelous charge that the pro-Israel community was suppressing real debate on Israel. Carter was forced to listen to and answer some pointed questions from his student audience, and even retreated on one of the most troubling sentences in his book. Students came away energized by Carter’s speech, enough so that they seemed willing to continue the debate by bringing more speakers to the campus. This is a bad thing?

Brandeis may be a Jewish-sponsored institution, but it is also a university. Advocacy groups or a philanthropy may choose to vet more carefully who is and isn’t a credible speaker. But if anyone has a “right,” it is a university student, and that right is to hear the widest range of messages, sage and repellant.