I think that academic freedom is very important. I don't like the idea of professors getting fired over specific statements or claims that they make. Freedom of speech requires us to tolerate speech we find disagreeable or offensive. If it only applied to views we consider laudable then it wouldn't have been necessary to include it in the bill of rights.
Having said that, I do think that there are too many academic posers that have attached themselves to the higher education system in a parasitic way and who substitute various victimization theories for objective intellectual discourse. I suspect Ward is one of these. These are also the ones who are the least likely to suffer dissent from their own students and give grades based on how well their pupils have adapted this ideology as their own.
The case of the bloggers who were fired by John Edwards (or they resigned) over crude statements about the Virgin Mary is instructive here. I thought it odd at the time that so few of the usual suspects had come to her defense so I went to her personal blog
Pandagon and was amazed. This women graduated from some college, possibly UT-Austin, with an English degree but writes like a remedial sixth grader. She did seem to pick up quite a lot of left-sounding jargon, though (reactionary, patriarchal, etc.). At least she's not designing bridges.
Ward will be okay, though. I hear he is a top contender to play John Redcorn in a broadway play based on the animated series "King of the Hill".
Looking through Pandagon's latest enries I found this gem:
"Okay, now that the boring stuff is out of the way, now for the fun stuff."
Perhaps she was riffing on Austin Powers', "Allow myself to introduce myself" but it is unlikely since that film treats women as objects.