Free speech...

...That's not funny

The colleges represented were—to use a word that their emissaries regard as numinous—diverse: huge research universities, tiny liberal-arts colleges, Catholic schools, land-grant institutions. But the students’ taste in entertainment was uniform. They liked their slam poets to deliver the goods in tones of the highest seriousness and on subjects of lunar bleakness; they favored musicians who could turn out covers with cheerful precision; and they wanted comedy that was 100 percent risk-free, comedy that could not trigger or upset or mildly trouble a single student. They wanted comedy so thoroughly scrubbed of barb and aggression that if the most hypersensitive weirdo on campus mistakenly wandered into a performance, the words he would hear would fall on him like a soft rain, producing a gentle chuckle and encouraging him to toddle back to his dorm, tuck himself in, and commence a dreamless sleep—not text Mom and Dad that some monster had upset him with a joke.

The article later mentions the case of a gay comic who did a routine about "sassy black friends" which was considered improper by some (not the race angle but the possible stereotyping of gays). I think this is going too far but I would equally agree with the the contention that a lot of comedy targeted at gays is homophobic. The general rule of thumb -- comedy that talks truth to power, not one that condescends to difference -- is the best barometer of appropriateness, I think.