When the news broke in the "New York Times" in August 2009 that Yale University Press had decided to remove twelve Danish cartoon images of the prophet Mohammed from "The Cartoons That Shook the World," a forthcoming book by Brandeis political scientist Jytte Klausen, the author felt that the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) had only three or four hours to issue a statement if they wanted to shape the story as it spread through the media. As AAUP president at the time, he believed it should be treated as a story about a major university that violated an author's academic freedom. He knew that the story was likely to veer off in a different direction. Conservative bloggers and media outlets would immediately brand it as a story about political correctness--about liberal faculty and administrators afraid to offend Muslim religious sensibilities. In this article, the author contends that getting AAUP values into the media requires quick action and strong statements. Extended deliberation produces better results, but it is not flawless, and it is not always practical. Limiting ourselves to occasions when we can spend a year or two mulling matters over makes us largely irrelevant in a world of rapid information and opinion flow. The simple truth is that higher education--and thus the country at large--will benefit from wider dissemination of AAUP values. Shared governance is not perfect, but it is far better than administrative fiat. Academic freedom is about as close to a supreme value as higher education is likely to find. The job of getting those principles widely known and accepted is well worth risk and struggle. It means we must compete against unsympathetic groups and constituencies in the press and throughout the public sphere. The more publicly outspoken AAUP of recent years has taken on that task with notable success.