University of California, Davis, medical school professor Michael Wilkes doesn’t shy from controversial positions, or criticism of the university where he teaches.

That’s how how First Amendment free speech rights work.

That’s also how academic freedom works, a bedrock principle that criticism and open competition among ideas are the “surest safeguard of truth,” wrote the American Association of Universities in 1953.

But First Amendment and academic freedom principles are under challenge at the medical school.

When Wilkes penned an op-ed column in 2010, he received a document on letterhead from legal counsel, requested by UC Davis School of Medicine Dean Claire Pomeroy, saying the university could potentially sue him for defamation for hurting the reputation of the university.

That is outrageous and calls for action by Chancellor Linda Katehi.

Just what drew that overwrought response from the medical school?

Wilkes, a recognized expert on prostate cancer, co-authored an op-ed piece with a USC professor. Published in the San Francisco Chronicle, it said prostate screening not only may do no good, it may be harmful and lambasted a UC Davis men’s health seminar advertising “Prostate Defense Begins at 40.”

The authors labeled the seminar an “infomercial endorsement” of prostate screening: “We can’t say why UC Davis offers this course that ignores scientific evidence, but we wonder whether it just might have to do with money.”

Wilkes has been outspoken in questioning marketing by medical industries in Bee columns, too.

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