In September, we reported in this space on the controversy over the decision by Yale University Press to censor Jytte Klausen’s book The Cartoons That Shook the World. The cartoons at issue, of course, are the now-famous caricatures of Muhammad that appeared in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten in 2005. As we noted, Yale’s iconoclasm went further. Not only did it insist that a book about the Danish cartoons be published without the cartoons—more or less like publishing a study of the Mona Lisa without deigning to include an illustration of the painting—Yale also insisted that Professor Klausen omit various other artistic and historical representations of Muhammad, e.g., an illustration by Gustave Doré of a scene in the Divine Comedy.

Yale’s deplorable behavior was a double capitulation. Terrified of being charged with “Islamophobia,” Yale administrators capitulated, f ...

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