Torillian said:
Is there a basic right to talk at universities that people are being denied I'm unaware of? |
It seems to be mostly invited events where the Libertarian or Conservative speaker is being given an extremely hard time, if not completely rejected from speaking on certain campuses. Not just a few either. It's not always the campus administration outright denying the event, but there are lot's of times where a crowd of students from the campus gather to protest and get violent to the point where they won't let people into the event. Sometimes if they can't stop them that way, they will constantly pull the fire alarm to force the event to be cancelled. There are times when the event get's cancelled because another event/speaker was booked instead last minute, just by chance. Sometimes it's flat out rejection due to how they are viewed by the mainstream, which is usually negative. Other times within the event itself, it's bombarded by protesters who yell and shout consistently, making the event a wash. Sometimes there is security to get them to leave, but it's not all that often the speaker pushes hard to get them forced out. Usually they allow them to continue to protest, as annoying as it is, because it is their right, and so they would be hypocrites themselves to forcefully stop them.
People like Milo, Shapiro, Peterson, Ruben, etc, are constantly dealing with these kinds of situations. Libertarians and Conservatives. Even Owen Benjamin, a comedian, who's into politics as well, is constantly hassled trying to set up his events. So many times he's set up the event and paid for it, and they cancel on him last minute to try and silence him. To try and say it's simply bad luck or coincidence would be to simply deny the fact of the matter. It happens so often to him and others, that they now try to set up a back up plan where the event can be moved to another close unknown location that only the people at the original event get told if there's a problem. Ruben was supposed to speak at some campus I believe and he ended up moving to a local arena because of the last minute issues.
You also have to take into account private contributions to these campuses, sometimes quite large, and if those entities refuse to continue to help fund the school due to allowing Libertarians or Conservatives to hold events and speak freely, what are you going to do? By Trump pushing back and holding back Government funding due to denying free speech, directly or indirectly, it will force the campuses to decide what's more important to them, and whether or not they want to educate their students to be as tolerant as possible in the future.
This is just what is happening in the physical world, not to mention the issues these people and many others are having in the digital world in terms of being banned or de-platformed etc. There was an interview with the YouTube CEO and the female host mentioned she wished the CEO would ban Shapiro because her son was watching his videos and she didn't like it and was worried it would lead to him becoming an extremist right winger. She also mentioned how she told the CEO earlier how she needed to ban Jones, which coincidentally ended up happening not much later. Now while Jones is certainly somewhat controversial, Shapiro is about as straight laced as they come, and more importantly, if your the parent, it's your job to take care of your kids. Social media isn't a school or babysitter and expecting them to be, is another main reason as to why censoring has become such a large problem and concern.
