Invited Speakers at Universities

Auburn85 · April 20, 2017

http://www.ktvu.com/news/ktvu-local-news/249773348-story

"A day after UC Berkeley said it would be unable to accommodate a speech by conservative commentator Ann Coulter, the university announced Thursday that it has extended an invite to the pundit.

It was not clear if Coulter will accept the new invite but the university said it has found a suitable venue to host a speech by Coulter and that the speech could be held on May 2.

"While it is not one we have used for these sorts of events in the past, it can both accommodate a substantial audience and meet the security criteria established by our police department," Chancellor Nicholas Dirks said.

The administrator said school officials have informed the Berkeley College Republicans, who originally invited Coulter to campus, and Coulter team.

"We look forward to working with them," Dirks said, adding that the school will announce where she will be speaking after Coulter's acceptance. "We will disclose the exact location of the venue once we have finalized details with both organizations."

Berkeley is still reeling from a violent protest that erupted on April 15 when supporters and opponents of President Donald Trump clashed. During that event, 20 people were arrested and 11 people were hurt during the melee that broke out.

Several hundred demonstrators and counter-demonstrators gathered at the Martin Luther King. Jr. Civic Center Park for the April 15 rallies. Similar rallies were held at the park on March 4 and resulted in 10 people being arrested.

Campus administrators said registered student groups have the right to invite speakers to address their groups but school officials must still provide safety and security during the events.

Said Dirks: "As the home of the Free Speech Movement, we fully support the right and ability of our students to host speakers of their choice, and we believe that exposing students to a diverse array of perspectives is an inherent and inseparable part of our educational mission."

"We also have an unwavering commitment to providing for the safety and well-being of speakers who come to campus, our students and other members of our campus and surrounding communities."

Campus police said they have received information about threats to Coulter, speech attendees and protesters if the event were to go forward on the April 27 date originally planned for her appearance."

Proud Tiger · April 21, 2017

According to The Plaonsman Maxine Waters is scheduled to speak tomorrow night in Foy Union as a guest of the Auburn student Democrat Club. Sure hasn't got much publicity. As I said about Spencer, I don't agree with much he has to say but believe in free speech. Same goes for the lying, ultra liberal Waters. They are charging $35 to hear her. Good luck.

PUB78 · April 22, 2017

Probably not

On 4/20/2017 at 9:20 PM, Proud Tiger said:

According to The Plaonsman Maxine Waters is scheduled to speak tomorrow night in Foy Union as a guest of the Auburn student Democrat Club. Sure hasn't got much publicity. As I said about Spencer, I don't agree with much he has to say but believe in free speech. Same goes for the lying, ultra liberal Waters. They are charging $35 to hear her. Good luck.

Probably not many Democrats at Auburn University.

Auburn85 · April 22, 2017

https://www.wsj.com/articles/those-snowflakes-have-chilling-effects-even-beyond-the-campus-1492800913

Those ‘Snowflakes’ Have Chilling Effects Even Beyond the Campus

By

Heather Mac Donald

April 21, 2017 2:55 p.m. ET

1253 COMMENTS

Student thuggery against non-leftist viewpoints is in the news again. Agitators at Claremont McKenna College, Middlebury College, and the University of California’s Berkeley and Los Angeles campuses have used threats, brute force and sometimes criminal violence over the past two months in efforts to prevent Milo Yiannopoulos, Charles Murray, Ann Coulter and me from speaking. As commencement season approaches, expect “traumatized” students to try to disinvite any remotely conservative speaker, an effort already under way at Notre Dame with regard to Vice President Mike Pence.

This soft totalitarianism is routinely misdiagnosed as primarily a psychological disorder. Young “snowflakes,” the thinking goes, have been overprotected by helicopter parents, and now are unprepared for the trivial conflicts of ordinary life.

“The Coddling of the American Mind,” a 2015 article in the Atlantic, was the most influential treatment of the psychological explanation. The movement to penalize certain ideas is “largely about emotional well-being,” argued Greg Lukianoff of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education and Jonathan Haidt of New York University. The authors took activists’ claims of psychological injury at face value and proposed that freshmen orientations teach students cognitive behavioral therapy so as to preserve their mental health in the face of differing opinions.

But if risk-averse child-rearing is the source of the problem, why aren’t heterosexual white male students demanding “safe spaces”? They had the same kind of parents as the outraged young women who claim to be under lethal assault from the patriarchy. And they are the targets of a pervasive discourse that portrays them as the root of all evil. Unlike any other group on a college campus, they are stigmatized with impunity, blamed for everything from “rape culture” to racial oppression.

Campus intolerance is at root not a psychological phenomenon but an ideological one. At its center is a worldview that sees Western culture as endemically racist and sexist. The overriding goal of the educational establishment is to teach young people within the ever-growing list of official victim classifications to view themselves as existentially oppressed. One outcome of that teaching is the forceful silencing of contrarian speech.

At UC Berkeley, the Division of Equity and Inclusion has hung banners throughout campus reminding students of their place within the ruthlessly competitive hierarchy of victimhood. One depicts a black woman and a Hispanic man urging fellow students to “create an environment where people other than yourself can exist.” That’s not meant as hyperbole. Students have been led to believe they are at personal risk from circumambient bigotry. After the February riots at Berkeley against Mr. Yiannopoulos, a columnist in the student newspaper justified his participation in the anarchy: “I can only fight tooth and nail for the right to exist.” Another opined that physical attacks against supporters of Mr. Yiannopoulos and President Trump were “not acts of violence. They were acts of self-defense.”

Such maudlin pleas for self-preservation are typical. An editorialin the Wellesley College student newspaper last week defended “shutting down rhetoric that undermines the existence and rights of others.”

Offending “rhetoric” frequently includes the greatest works of Western civilization. In November 2015, a Columbia sophomoreannounced on Facebook that his “health and life” were threatened by a Core Curriculum course taught by a white professor. The comment thread exploded with sympathetic rage: “The majority of why?te [sic] students taking [Contemporary Civilization] and on this campus never have to be consistently aware of their identities as white ppl while sitting in CC reading racist, patriarchal texts taught by white professors who most likely are unaware of the various forms of impact that CC texts have on people of color.”

Another sophomore fulminated: “Many of these texts INSPIRED THE RACISM THAT I’M FORCED TO LIVE WITH DAILY, and to expect, or even suggest, that that doesn’t matter, is [obscenity] belittling, insulting, and WAY OUT OF [obscenity] LINE.” Those “racist” texts include works by Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Rousseau and Mill.

Many observers dismiss such ignorant tantrums as a phase that will end once the “snowflakes” encounter the real world. But the graduates of the academic victimology complex are remaking the world in their image. The assumption of inevitable discrimination against women and minorities plagues every nonacademic institution today, resulting in hiring and promotion based on sex and race at the expense of merit.

Seemingly effete academic concepts enter the mainstream at an ever-quickening pace. A December 2016 report on policing from the federal Office of Community Oriented Policing Services includes a section on “intersectionality”—the campus-spawned notion that individuals who can check off multiple victim boxes experience exponentially higher and more complex levels of life-threatening oppression than lower-status single-category victims.

Faculty and campus administrators must start defending the Enlightenment legacy of reason and civil debate. But even if dissenting thought were welcome on college campuses, the ideology of victimhood would still wreak havoc on American society and civil harmony. The silencing of speech is a massive problem, but it is a symptom of an even more profound distortion of reality.

Ms. Mac Donald is a fellow at the Manhattan Institute and author of “The War on Cops” (Encounter, 2016).

Proud Tiger · April 23, 2017

23 hours ago, PUB78 said:

Probably not

Probably not many Democrats at Auburn University.

The Foy auditorium was only half full to hear Maxine Waters Friday night. And even then the attendees were from all over the state. It was a non event. Her whole speech was to "impeach Trump." Free speech is her right as well but she won't find much sympathy for impeaching Trump in Auburn. Not sure why the young Democrats couldn't have found a more appropriate speaker fot their cause.

Auburn85 · April 24, 2017

http://www.mediaite.com/online/city-university-of-new-york-chooses-pro-sharia-activist-as-commencement-speaker/

City University of New York Chooses Pro-Sharia Activist As Commencement Speaker

The City University of New York’s Graduate School of Public Health announced on Wednesday that controversial Muslim activist Linda Sarsour will be the keynote speaker at the commencement on June 1, 2017.

The president of the school, Ayman El-Mohandes, trumpeted that Sarsour — who is an alumna of the CUNY system — as “an advocate of social justice.” He also touted her record as a “community organizer.”

Many have, however, criticized the state-funded university’s decision to honor the co-organizer of the Women’s March.

On Friday, CBS’s New York City affiliate, WCBS-TV, spotlighted howNew York Assemblyman Dov Hikind took CUNY to task: “I mean, it’s just nuts. It makes no sense. It’s crazy to have this woman [Sarsour] be the person who’s going to speak to the students.”

Hikind zeroed in on Sarsour’s support for Sharia Law and violence against Israel — citing an October 2015 Tweet by the activist.

“She [Sarsour] is someone who associates with radical Islamists; supports them; shows support for them. She is someone who has said, clearly, she thinks throwing rocks at cars in Israel is a good thing” Hikind outlined.

Fox News also covered the latest controversy surrounding Sarsour in a Sunday article. The news outlet pointed out her outspoken stance against Zionism, and singled out an October 2012 Twitter post where she equated it with racism.

Auburn85 · April 28, 2017

Auburn85 · May 12, 2017

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/devos-speech-bethune-cookman-commencement-sparks-protests-outrage-n757551

Quote

DeVos’ Speech at Bethune-Cookman’s Commencement Sparks Protests, Outrage

Bethune-Cookman University graduates booed, turned their backs and walked out during Education Secretary Betsy DeVos' 22 minute commencement speech on Wednesday — all in an effort to make it known they didn't want her, as a representative of the Trump administration, to speak on their special day.

One person was physically removed by police from the Daytona Beach, Florida, auditorium.

Auburn85 · May 26, 2017

http://www.mediaite.com/online/professor-at-evergreen-state-college-chased-off-campus-by-students-protesting-his-racism/

"Professor at Evergreen State College Chased Off Campus by Students Protesting His ‘Racism’

Professor Bret Weinstein of Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington had to hold his classes in a park off campus on Thursday after student protesters demanded his firing. Weinstein had voiced his objection to a race-based “Day of Absence” that would have asked whites to leave the school for a day."

(A Muslim-American Activist’s Speech Raises Ire Even Before It’s Delivered

Linda Sarsour, one of the most prominent Muslim-American activists in New York, says the messages have been arriving by the hour recently.

“Your time is coming.”

“A good Arab is a dead Arab.”

“You’re getting two bullets in your head.”

Ms. Sarsour, one of the lead organizers of the Women’s March on Washington, has tackled issues like immigration policy, mass incarceration, stop-and-frisk and the New York Police Department’s spying operation on Muslims — all of which have largely inured her to hate-tinged criticism.

But it is the commencement address she is to deliver next week to about 100 students at the City University of New York School of Public Health that she says has drawn the most hostility and ire she has ever experienced.

“Linda Sarsour is a Sharia-loving, terrorist-embracing, Jew-hating, ticking time bomb of progressive horror,” the conservative media personality Milo Yiannopoulos said at a rally on Thursday outside CUNY’s main office, as protesters held signswith images associated with the often racist and anti-Semitic language used by what is known as the alt-right, a far-right, white nationalist movement.

The controversy over Ms. Sarsour’s appearance is the latest dispute in a heated national dialogue over free speech on university campuses.

But in this instance, the roles have been reversed. Other protests have largely pitted left-wing students against conservative speakers like Mr. Yiannopoulos, Ann Coulter, Gavin McInnes and Charles Murray. This time, conservatives are leading the charge against Ms. Sarsour.

Her critics are a strange mix, including right-leaning Jews and Zionists, commentators like Pamela Gell e r, and some members of the alt-right.

They accuse her of sympathizing with terrorists, supporting Sharia law and anti-Semitism for statements she has made about politics in the Middle East.

The CUNY chancellor, James B. Milliken, has defended the appearance on the basis of free speech, and a group of CUNY professors, some prominent progressives and liberal Jewish groups have spoken in her support.

Fred Smith Jr., a constitutional scholar and assistant professor at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law, said the controversy was a reminder of the bipartisan nature of the outcry over free-speech issues.

“There are a few people who have been very effective in branding the left at shutting down free speech, but the moment they are confronted with leftist speech they don’t like, they are equally outraged and poised to suppress that speech,” he said. “I don’t think that’s the answer for either side. The more you try to suppress speech, the more the ideas of the suppressed speaker become salient to more people. It makes the person more well known and attracts more people to those ideas.”

The debate about Ms. Sarsour’s speech began last month with Dov Hikind, a conservative Democratic state assemblyman who represents a largely Orthodox community in Brooklyn. Mr. Hikind said Ms. Sarsour should not have been chosen, pointing to her recent appearance in Chicago with Rasmea Odeh, who was convicted in Israel of playing a role in the bombing of a supermarket that killed two civilians in 1969.

Mr. Hikind also pointed to a picture Ms. Sarsour once posted on Twitter of a Palestinian boy standing across from police officers with rocks in his hands. Ms. Sarsour wrote that the photo was “The definition of courage.”

Mr. Hikind said in a phone interview, “You can’t support a terrorist and then be the commencement speaker at a university that my taxes help pay for.”

His opposition drew a flurry of coverage in late April, as news that Ms. Sarsour had been invited to speak spread among local news outlets, Jewish publications and the conservative media establishment. Mr. Hikind’s office also circulated a letter signed by 100 holocaust survivors asking Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo to cancel the address.

Auburn85 · May 29, 2017

http://www.newsweek.com/linda-sarsour-feminist-movement-leader-too-extreme-cuny-graduation-speech-615031

Quote

...At the Dartmouth talk, a student asked about that tweet. The student was an activist with CAMERA on Campus, a branch of the Comittee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America, an organization that points out anti-Israeli bias in the media. Sarsour responded by attacking him, pointing out that he was a “white man” speaking at an event meant to honor Asian Pacific American Heritage Month. She said the tweet was a “copy and paste that he got from a right-wing blog,” seeming to suggest that the offensive message had not come from her account...

homersapien · May 29, 2017

On 5/12/2017 at 6:39 PM, Auburn85 said:

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/devos-speech-bethune-cookman-commencement-sparks-protests-outrage-n757551

What is it about careless 'tweeting' that people find so hard to resist?

Auburn85 · May 29, 2017

Auburn85 · June 2, 2017

http://www.pressdemocrat.com/news/7024591-181/critics-blast-ssu-graduation-poem?artslide=0

Quote

Critics blast SSU graduation poem as ‘hate speech’

A spirited poem decrying racial injustice and conservative politics read before hundreds at Sonoma State University’s weekend graduation ceremony drew sharp criticism from some parents over its tone and coarse language while prompting an email apology from President Judy Sakaki.

Graduating senior Dee Dee Simpson recited her poem from memory Saturday night on stage at Weill Hall in the Green Music Center, where a record-setting 2,651 students received diplomas during the two-day commencement.

In the poem, Simpson, who is African-American, railed against police violence that has claimed black lives and made disparaging references to President Donald Trump and Fox News. The several minutes of verse contained a number of expletives.

Cara Freedman was outraged. The San Diego parent, who sat on the lawn waiting for her daughter, Alexa Grossman, to graduate, said she looked around to see people shaking their heads after Simpson “dropped the F-bomb.”

“We were shocked,” Freedman said Tuesday in an interview. “I’m still a little bit shocked. What kind of school is this? Who in the world would allow this to take place?”

Freedman and her ex-husband, Marc Grossman, also of San Diego, each fired off angry emails to Sakaki, who listened to Simpson’s poem from a few feet away. University officials said the two parents’ complaints were among four or five received to date.

“How could you allow anyone to give a hate speech like that?” Grossman wrote. “You should be ashamed of yourself. There were kids in the audience.”

Sakaki did not respond Wednesday to a either a request for comment through the school’s interim communications director or a message left on her cellphone. She was in Long Beach at the California State University Board of Trustees meeting where she received the California State Student Association President of the Year award.

However, Sakaki, who is completing her first year as president, apologized in an email to Grossman, saying she regretted the reading of Simpson’s poem. She blamed a new graduation format of six separate ceremonies for insufficient oversight of program content.

“While a university should include and allow for all kinds of voices and perspectives, and while this individual student is among our accomplished poets, having her offer this particular piece at the Arts and Humanities commencement was a mistake,” Sakaki said. “It simply should not have happened.”

Simpson, who graduated over the weekend with a degree in English education, did not respond to an emailed request for comment.

In her poem, she talked about black mothers instructing their children how to behave before police so they “come home at night.” She also seemed to chastise people upset by the Trump administration, saying black people have been suffering government abuses for decades.

“My people live in places you wouldn’t drive through in an armored truck,” Simpson told the crowd.

Kim Baptista, past managing editor of the campus newspaper who sat in the audience waiting to receive her communications degree, said she sympathized with the message but the venue in which it was delivered was wrong.

“People were taken aback,” Baptista said. “Here it was supposed to be a celebratory time. And you’re up there wagging your finger at us.”

A copy of Simpson’s poem was not available. In years past, graduation videos have been posted on YouTube in about a week.

Gillian Conoley, an English professor and the university’s Poet-in-Residence, defended the poem, which she said addressed a difficult time in race relations. Conoley, who also read a poem at the ceremony, said Simpson’s work was met with applause.

“I’m not surprised it evoked strong reactions,” she said. “That’s a sign of good work.”

Auburn85 · June 3, 2017

Auburn85 · June 3, 2017

http://www.theolympian.com/news/local/news-columns-blogs/article153699764.html

"There’s more to race protests at Evergreen than biology professor and viral videos

Read more here: http://www.theolympian.com/news/local/news-columns-blogs/article153699764.html#storylink=cpy

"My alma mater — The Evergreen State College in Olympia — has been in the news this week.

Perhaps you’ve heard.

This year’s annual Day of Absence in April followed by tense demonstrations on Tuesday, May 23 and Wednesday, May 24, have raised eyebrows and the ire of many around the country.

What you make of all of this, to no great surprise, depends largely on where you fall on the political spectrum.

For some, including this admittedly biased columnist, charged protests and important conversations about race are nothing new at Evergreen. They come with the territory, like drum circles in Red Square and year-long poetry immersions.

But for some conservatives, what’s transpired at Evergreen recently is a prime example of what they believe to be rampant and unchecked liberal intolerance.

Conservative media outlets large and small have had a field day with the Evergreen story, because it fits into their larger narrative about everything that’s wrong on college campuses.

On Wednesday, state Rep. Matt Manweller, R-Ellensburg, went so far as to suggest stripping state funds from the school and privatizing it. In doing so, he followed in the footsteps of lawmakers skeptical of the school from its very beginnings, including Gov. Dixy Lee Ray, a Democrat, and former state Rep. James Kuehnle, a Republican from the Spokane Valley.

In an email to The News Tribune, Manweller said the state “can’t continue to fund intolerance.”

“And it's not just Evergreen,” he continued. “They just happened to be the worst right now.”

But making sense of what’s gone on at Evergreen requires more nuance than that provided by YouTube clips, political grandstanding or a five-minute segment on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show, which aired under the header, “Campus Craziness.”

So, first, a bit of background:

According to Evergreen spokesman Zach Powers, the school’s annual Day of Absence started in the 1970s. Inspired by the Douglas Turner Ward play of the same name, the idea is “to address current issues surrounding race at Evergreen and beyond,” Powers said.

As coverage in Evergreen’s newspaper, the Cooper Point Journal, makes clear, there are many “issues surrounding race” that are being grappled with on campus.

These issues largely involve the campus police, who Evergreen students have demanded be disarmed.

Meanwhile, other matters the college paper describes as related to “racism,” and “anti-blackness” have been brought to the forefront, including the need for sensitivity and cultural competency training, the creation of an Equity Center and the need for a permanent staff position dedicated to supporting undocumented students.

Previous to this year, the Day of Absence has involved some students, faculty and staff of color voluntarily gathering off campus for activities related to that cause, while white students, staff and faculty were able to voluntarily participate in related activities on campus.

This year, Powers says, a request was made to change things up to allow participants of color to hold Day of Absence activities on campus, while white participants who chose to participate were asked to remain off campus.

“I think that switch was inspired by a desire to affirm the belonging of students, faculty and staff of color,” Powers told me, while noting that, “Participation in the Day of Absence has always been and always will be entirely optional.”

For perspective, Powers says that about 200 staff, faculty and students — out of roughly 4,800 at Evergreen — left campus to take part in this year’s Day of Absence.

This year’s approach to the annual event is where biology professor Bret Weinstein got involved. In emails that were eventually published by the Cooper Point Journal, Weinstein objected to white students, faculty and staff being asked to leave campus, calling it “a show of force, and an act of oppression in and of itself.”

Which brings us to last week, when demonstrations at Evergreen went viral.

As Lisa Pemberton of The Olympian reported, hundreds of students took part in a demonstration on the Wednesday, May 24. They filled the third floor of Evergreen’s library building and surrounded president George Bridges’ office. To say things got heated and that language not fit for publication here was used probably is an understatement.

Raw video from the previous day shows demonstrators angrily confronting Weinstein on campus. Some call for his immediate resignation. Others refer to him as a racist. None of it was particularly pretty nor constructive.

To take it a step farther, it was a bad look — a flawed approach, and an example of the kind of thing that makes it easy for naysayers to discredit entire movements. You can agree or disagree with Weinstein, but it’s hard to see the point — or the good sense — in singling him out when the issues at Evergreen clearly go far beyond one biology professor and the rationale behind his objections to this year’s Day of Absence events.

The showdown eventually earned Weinstein a seat on the Tucker Carlson show, which is not the outlet I’d choose to thoughtfully air my grievances, but whatever. That’s his right.

So what’s really going on at Evergreen?

Much like your reaction to this story, your take on that question probably depends on your political leanings.

That’s been the case since the school’s experimental creation as a bastion for liberals in what was then a logging town, and it will likely continue long after folks like Manweller find some other example of liberal intolerance to rail against.

But here’s the truth this saga has laid bare: When it comes to issues of race, equality, and social justice, there’s a lot going on at Evergreen — like so many college campuses across the country right now. Dealing with things of this nature is rarely easy, and rarely pretty, but always worth the work. For the most part, Evergreen deserves credit for rolling up its sleeves and attempting to do just that.

“Right now at Evergreen, we’re focused on the four thousand students who are working hard to get through the quarter. Serving them and enabling them to reach their dream of a higher education is our top priority,” the college said in a statement to The News Tribune.

“Freedom of expression and freedom from discrimination remain essential values at Evergreen, as are tolerance and respect.”

The way the story has largely been portrayed this week — and jumped on by some seeking to score political points — doesn’t come close to doing the situation justice.

And that is what’s really unfortunate."

Auburn85 · June 4, 2017

http://depauliaonline.com/2017/05/30/eyewitnesses-person-allegedly-stabbed-depauls-campus-protests/

Quote

Man stabbed on DePaul’s campus during protests Tuesday night

DePaul Public Safety confirmed multiple eyewitnesses accounts that a person was stabbed on DePaul University’s campus Tuesday evening. It is unclear whether the altercation was related to the rally held near the Student Center earlier that evening.

In an email sent out to the University community on Wednesday, Public Safety said that the two men involved in the altercation were not students at DePaul and that it was unclear whether they were involved in the rally on campus.

“DePaul’s Office of Public Safety confirmed that a man was stabbed during an altercation with another man around 7:00 p.m. at 2331 N. Sheffield Ave,” the email said. “A bystander subdued the alleged offender and DePaul Public Safety quickly detained him until the Chicago Police Department arrived to take him into custody. The injured man was transported to the hospital. His injuries are believed to be non-life threatening.”

Public Safety also said that patrols will be increased on the Lincoln Park campus for the rest of the spring term.

One of the eyewitness accounts was Nick, a DePaul student who preferred his last name not be used due to safety concerns. He said that he saw two people arguing, one in black and one in orange, outside of his Sheffield Square apartment. The man in black was shouting that the other man had a knife. Nick said he watched the two walk out of sight from his apartment window, and then heard what sounded like a crash and a series of thuds. Public Safety, Nick said, “leisurely strolled over” to the scene. Though it was out of sight he said that “something violent absolutely happened.”

“One guy definitely looked like he’d been stabbed, he had a cloth on the back of his head to stop the bleeding,” Nick said. “I saw three security officers not really intervening. It didn’t look like there was any rigorous response to it.”

The Chicago General Defense Committee’s (CGDC) “Rally Against Hate” started out as an event that was closely watched by Public Safety outside the main entrance of the Student Center. But it eventually turned into a screaming match between the group, the DePaul College Republicans and other bystanders.

“I just think it’s sad and disappointing,” DePaul College Republicans President John Minster said. “I think cancelling the speaker in the first place only emboldens people to continue to do stuff like this.”

At first, CGDC slowly started coming together, silent as Kendrick Lamar’s “Humble” played in the background. Once things started getting out of hand, the Chicago Police Department (CPD) formed two lines barricading CGDC from everyone else.

The College Republicans eventually responded by singing the Star-Spangled Banner as well.

The protests were in response to the cancellation of an appearance by Gavin McInnes, a conservative writer and media figure. On one side were “Antifa” protesters and, according to Nick, perhaps some anarchists. On the other side, were members of a “pro-Western fraternal organization” started by McInnes called the Proud Boys, and some members of the DePaul College Republicans.

CGDC advertised the protest on a flier which stated, “(…) Now more than ever, it is time to push back. Let us celebrate victory by reclaiming the public spaces that they have hijacked with their hateful and dangerous rhetoric. Let’s celebrate by lifting the voices of those that today’s fascists dare to silence!”

By the time Nick reached the street, the fight was over. Nick said he saw the man in orange on the ground, being handcuffed, and the other man was being moved to the back of a police car.

Rosita Palma, also a DePaul student, said she watched what was happening from the stairs leading up to her Sheffield apartment. She largely saw what Nick saw, but also said that the student in orange was shocked with a stun gun and, once they fell to the ground, the man in black started to punch him.

“In general, it’s disappointing that this kind of stuff happens,” Nick said. “I know that this is politically charged, but it’s really a shame. The fact that it happened outside of my home is pretty rattling.”

Auburn85 · June 4, 2017

https://diverseeducation.com/article/97274/

Quote

Princeton Professor Cancels Lectures After Speech Leads to Threats

by Associated Press

TRENTON, N.J. — A Princeton University professor says she canceled lectures this week after receiving death threats following a commencement address in which she called President Donald Trump “a racist and sexist megalomaniac.”

Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, an assistant professor of African American Studies at the Ivy League school in New Jersey, spoke to graduates at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts, on May 20.

In a Wednesday statement, Taylor provided examples of racially derogatory and misogynistic slurs she said were in the emails. She said the emails followed FOX News coverage of her speech, and she blamed Fox News for the backlash. She said it ran the story to “incite and unleash the mob-like mentality of its fringe audience.”

FOX News hasn’t responded to a request for comment.

Taylor said that in the commencement address, she wanted to warn graduates about the world they graduated into and she said she argued that Trump “poses a threat to their future.”

The author of “From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation” said she canceled appearances this week at Seattle’s Town Hall and the University of California-San Diego. She said she released her statement because she will “not be silent.”

Taylor has declined to comment further. She is on sabbatical from Princeton for the 2016-17 academic year.

Auburn85 · June 4, 2017

http://pix11.com/2017/06/01/muslim-activist-linda-sarsour-cheered-at-cuny-graduation/

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Muslim activist Linda Sarsour cheered at CUNY graduation

HARLEM, Manhattan –– A Muslim-American activist whose role as a commencement speaker had come under protest from critics opposing her stance on Israel was given a standing ovation by graduating students Thursday after she told them they must commit to demanding change.

Thursday was the first commencement of the City University of New York Graduate School of Public Health, but instead of the class of 2017- public attention swirled around the invited keynote speaker --Linda Sarsour.

"She supports terrorism she supports sharia," Karen Lichtbraun said. "She's anti-Semite."

"She's an amazing leader," Cassady Fendlay said. "She's an inspiration."

Linda Sarsour is a Palestinian-American activist. She was a national co-chair of the Women's March on Washington. But vocal critics including state assemblyman Dov Hikind said Sarsour associates supports radical Islam and she's an unfit graduation speaker for a publicly funded university.

"There have been three protests in Manhattan prior to this asking the governor asking the chancellor to have her removed," Karen Lichtbraun said.

"We're really saddened to see the unfounded attacks on her," Leo said.

The university stood by their invitation. They saw an opportunity to reflect on free speech and academic freedom.

Thursday evening Sarsour stepped on the stage.

"I'm still unapologetically Muslim American Palestinian american and from Brooklyn, New York," Sarsour said.

And said there is no other place she'd rather be.

"In the age of alternative facts and fake news and emboldened racism and xenophobia we cannot be silent," Sarsour said.

"Keynotes sometimes fall short and this one didn't it was wonderful," Eleni Murphy said.

Auburn85 · June 17, 2017

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/16/opinion/media-alt-right-evergreen-college.html

Quote

The Media Brought the Alt-Right to My Campus

Olympia, Wash. — Evergreen State College is always an unusual school, located on the outskirts of the eclectic town of Olympia, Wash., but something about the end of the school year inspires people to really let their freak flags fly. Drum circles and students with colorful hair and piercings are commonplace, and it’s not out of the ordinary to see the circus club practicing acrobatics.

This year is different. Many students are leaving campus as quickly as they can, and some, fearing for their safety, say they won’t come back.

A few weeks ago, a video clip of students demonstrating outside the office of Bret Weinstein, a biology professor, went viral. In the clip, students can be seen shouting at Mr. Weinstein and calling him racist. Mr. Weinstein appeared on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show in a “Campus Craziness” segment and sat for interviews with many other media outlets.

In an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal, Mr. Weinstein wrote that students attacked him verbally “seemingly out of the blue” after he objected to an event in which “white people were asked to leave campus” for a day. He said that the college had “slipped into madness.”

As a student here, I know that the truth is more complicated. The protests were part of a planned week of action over several incidents that had sparked a schoolwide discussion on race. Aseries of emails that Mr. Weinstein sent to an all-faculty list were a small part of this. In one email, he objected to the design of an equity council that would guide faculty hiring to improve racial equity. In another, he voiced his opposition to a new structure for the Day of Absence, an Evergreen tradition since the 1970s.

The tradition was inspired by a Douglas Turner Ward play in which all the black residents of a town disappear so that the populace is forced to recognize their vital contributions. In previous years, students and faculty of color would leave Evergreen for a day and hold off-site workshops while white students stayed on campus.

This year, the organizers decided to hold workshops for white people off-campus instead — a reversal of the original concept. The intention was to put the focus on students of color, and highlight their contributions within the Evergreen space. The off-campus event was optional, and students who wanted to participate had to enroll: The workshops could hold only 200 people. Evergreen has about 4,000 students. There was no way the whole school could have been forced to participate.

Yet Mr. Weinstein declared that this event structure was “an act of oppression” against white people.

It is important to point out that Mr. Weinstein was within his rights to question how these initiatives were structured. But his critiques seemed to diminish the very purpose of them. Students wanted him to understand why these initiatives were so important to so many in our community.

What can’t be seen in the viral video of the student protest in his office is that students started by calmly stating their concerns. The way he responded to those concerns made students feel invalidated. It may have seemed inappropriate that they let their emotions escalate in frustration, but that doesn’t mean there was no context.

But the media saw in Mr. Weinstein a self-proclaimed progressive who appeared to be vilified simply for voicing a dissenting opinion. Evergreen students were accused of violence and of trying to enforce a divisive political correctness.

The fallout from that coverage hit our campus like a hailstorm. It may not have been his intention, but Mr. Weinstein’s many interviews effectively became a call to arms for internet trolls and the alt-right. Online vigilantes from 4chan, Reddit and other forums swarmed to unearth Evergreen students’ contact information. They have harassed us with hundreds of phone calls, anonymous texts and terrifyingly specific threats of violence that show they know where we live and work.

After I published an essay on Medium to explain the protesters’ side of the story, my full name, phone number and home address were posted online, and I was bombarded with hate-filled messages. I found my name and personal information on message boards, along with rape threats and discussions about which racial slur fit me best (the consensus was the N-word). It took three days to get my personal information taken down, and for others it took longer.

In the past few weeks, the school has been shut down four times because of threats, including one from an anonymous caller who said, “I’m on my way to Evergreen University now with a .44 Magnum. I am gonna execute as many people on that campus as I can get a hold of.”

Downtown Olympia has seen a sudden influx of visitors wearing Nazi and white supremacist regalia. Campus buildings have been scrawled with graffiti that says, “Diversity Equals White Genocide” and “No Safe Space For Commies.” Swastikas and racial slurs have been chalked and painted on Evergreen property.

Yesterday, the campus was mostly shut down after 3 p.m. because Patriot Prayer, a right-leaning protest group that espouses a love for guns and President Trump and a hatred for so-called snowflakes, descended on the campus for a “free speech” rally. Patriot Prayer was recently in the news for marching in Portland, Ore., after the killing of two people by a white supremacist who was aligned with the group, even though the mayor of Portland pleaded with them to postpone their event.

While recent events may have brought negative attention to my school, I am proud of students here who found a way to create change. In the movies, protests always look heroic, but they tend to be messy in real life. Weren’t the protests of the 1960s unpopular and messy sometimes, too?

After a series of petitions and protests by students, George Bridges, the president of Evergreen, agreed to require bias training for the staff and faculty and create better protections for undocumented students. It wasn’t everything the students had asked for, but it was a step in the right direction.

Bret Weinstein’s interview with Tucker Carlson aired on the same day students met with President Bridges. We were surprised to hear Mr. Weinstein’s claims, which seemed far removed from what we had witnessed, and saddened to see how almost overnight his version of events became the entire narrative.

Mr. Weinstein’s story about Evergreen’s regressive campus culture fit neatly into many misconceptions about the “new left,” so it seemed to go unquestioned. However, for many students, staff and faculty at Evergreen, the harassment that came after the negative coverage of the protesters was a shocking and bitter twist. It is not lost on us that students of color are the ones who have been disproportionately targeted.

Auburn85 · June 17, 2017

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/16/us/evergreen-state-protests.html

Quote

A Campus Argument Goes Viral. Now the College Is Under Siege.

OLYMPIA, Wash. — It started with a suggestion that white students and professors leave campus for a day, a twist on a tradition of black students voluntarily doing the same.

A professor objected, and his argument with a loud and profane group of protesters outside his classroom soon rocketed across the internet.

On Friday, more than three weeks later, Evergreen State College had to hold its commencement 30 miles from campus, at a rented baseball stadium where everyone had to pass through metal detectors.

In between, Evergreen, a small public college in Olympia along the Puget Sound, found itself on the front line of the national discontent over race, speech and political disagreement, becoming a magnet for extremes on the left and the right. After the dispute gained national exposure — amplified by the professor’s appearance on Fox News, his op-ed in The Wall Street Journal, and right-leaning websites’ heaping derision on their newest college target — the professor, Bret Weinstein, said he had to stay away from campus for his own safety and move his family into hiding.

Student protesters briefly occupied the president’s office to press their complaints of racism on campus. In one encounter, the president, George Bridges, was recorded meekly complying with a demand not to use hand gestures when he spoke because they were threatening.

The campus has received threats of violence via social media and calls to the county sheriff and 911 that forced administrators to lock down the campus for three weekdays in a row. The college had another lockdown on Thursday, as dozens of professed free-speech defenders tangled with anarchists who were waiting for them at Red Square, the campus plaza named for its red-brick walkways.

“I thought I’d be speaking from Red Square where graduation is traditionally held, and then as the alt-right backlash hit us, I wondered if we’d have graduation at all,” Anne Fischel, a documentary filmmaker and Evergreen professor, said in her commencement speech on Friday. “No one should see this graduation as a return to normalcy, to the way things were before. For one thing, the lives of some of our community members have been threatened, and they can’t be here today.”

Since the presidential election in November, colleges fromMiddlebury to Auburn to the University of California, Berkeleyhave become swept up in a running battle over free speech and politics.

But the conflict at Evergreen has been deeply distressing to many students and faculty members who see their college as a little utopia that has produced such creative alumni as Matt Groening, the creator of “The Simpsons,” and Macklemore, the hip-hop artist.

Students at Evergreen, founded in the progressive fervor of the 1960s, have no majors or grades and study in small groups, taking interdisciplinary classes where a marine biologist, for instance, might team up with a philosophy professor and a music professor.

“There is a tradition of trying to work things out,” said Ruth Hayes, a professor of animation. Referring to Professor Weinstein, she echoed the feelings of a number of her colleagues: “That he took this public I just feel like is a breach of trust.”

What also sets the Evergreen turmoil apart is that it began not with a controversy-courting guest speaker like Ann Coulter orMilo Yiannopoulo s, but a Bernie Sanders-backing biology professor who has been a fixture at the college for 15 years.

The conflict stems from the college’s Day of Absence, a tradition in which black people leave the campus to show what the place would be like without them. This year, organizers suggested the reverse: that white people who wanted to participate would leave while nonwhites stayed, and both groups would attend workshops to, as the email announcement put it, “explore issues of race, equity, allyship, inclusion and privilege.”

In an email to his colleagues, Professor Weinstein, who is white, said that when black people decided to leave, it made sense as “a forceful call to consciousness.” But to ask white people to leave, he wrote, “is a show of force, and an act of oppression in and of itself.”

“I would encourage others to put phenotype aside and reject this new formulation,” he wrote.

What followed can be viewed by anyone with a smartphone: a protest outside his classroom in which students derided his “racist” opinions and called him “useless,” preceded by an expletive; his appearance on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show; and scenes of students and professors arguing with other professors and their college president.

“Yes, they were rude,” the president, Mr. Bridges, said in an interview about the meeting in which he put down his hands. “What mattered was de-escalating the anger.”

And though students occupied his office for a couple of hours one afternoon, he said he never felt threatened.

“I was hired to be a change agent,” he said. His mission, he said, was to ask, “How do we address the equity gaps here?”

Professor Weinstein, who declined to be interviewed, has been lying low. But he is quite visible online, with a growing Twitter audience and a new blog offering his subscribers insights into“evolution, civilization and intolerance” for a nominal monthly fee.

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Pay attention: I say "irrespective of skin color" and it is transformed into an aggressive act of white supremacy. A preview of your future? https://twitter.com/HARBDARREL/status/873249306702041088 …

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On the other side, Naima Lowe, a media professor who has opposed him, and Rashida Love, the director of Evergreen’s First Peoples Multicultural Advising Services, who sent the email announcing the format of the Day of Absence, have also made themselves scarce, after being mercilessly ridiculed online.

There is a bigger context to the dispute, faculty members say. Overall enrollment at Evergreen has been declining since 2009, while minority enrollment, which now stands around 29 percent, is rising.

Some faculty members have said the college has not been adequately serving minority students, and an “equity council” developed a plan to address those issues. Professor Weinstein was among those who objected to parts of the plan. He saw its call for an “equity justification/explanation” for each potential hire as code for racial preference.

Ms. Lowe, who is black, said that he was misinterpreting the proposal and that its goal was to hire people with the right skills and experience to relate to “marginalized communities,” regardless of their race. As for the Day of Absence, held in April, organizers have said that it was voluntary and that no one implied that all white people should leave.

But the time for academic word-parsing has passed; the final days of the term were marked by riot police officers, barricades and metal detectors.

Strange alliances have formed. On Thursday, a group calling itself Patriot Prayer, a right-leaning band of 60 or 70 people from off campus waving American flags and one showing Pepe the Frog, a symbol of the alt-right movement, was joined for a while by two students.

One of them, Tamara Lindner, said she had been a student of Mr. Weinstein’s wife, also a biology professor at Evergreen, and wanted to support his right to free speech.

The other, Colin Trobough, said he was distressed at the way Evergreen had been portrayed. “I love Evergreen,” he told the Patriots gathered in the traffic circle.

The group marched onto campus, where about 200 people awaited them: anarchists and “anti-fascists” looking like graphic-novel ninjas, with black scarves hiding their faces and hoods covering their hair, flanked by aging professors in rumpled rain slickers.

The Patriots’ leader, Joey Gibson, strolled into the crowd of ninjas, where he was sprayed with Silly String, hit in the head with a can of it and then attacked with what may have been pepper spray before state police officers in riot gear restored order.

The college spent $100,000 to rent the minor-league stadium in Tacoma for the commencement on Friday. “I’m very glad we’re all here together,” Mr. Bridges said in his address, acknowledging the “fierce and disturbing” events of recent weeks.

Ellis Paguirigan, a 1991 Evergreen graduate whose daughter, Melia, was graduating and planned to go into ocean conservation, said they were both disappointed in Professor Weinstein’s stance.

Melia had Professor Weinstein in her freshman year and liked his class, Mr. Paguirigan said. But, he added, “my daughter is a person of color — she kind of takes it personal.”

Auburn85 · June 18, 2017

Auburn85 · July 20, 2017

http://thehill.com/homenews/media/342894-berkeley-cancels-ben-shapiro-speech-slated-for-september

Quote

Berkeley cancels event with conservative speaker Ben Shapiro

The University of California, Berkeley has reportedly refused to host a speech from conservative writer Ben Shapiro, sparking another flap over free speech at the public university.

The conservative website Daily Wire, where Shapiro serves as editor-in-chief, described in a report Wednesday how Berkeley informed the Berkeley College Republicans and the Young America's Foundation (YAF) — the two organizations planning the speech — that they are "unable to identify an available campus venue" for the event. Berkeley did not provide an alternative accommodation or date to host Shapiro as a speaker, according to the Daily Wire report.

But Berkeley disputed the account, with emails provided by a university spokesman suggesting that the school was only unable to find a large enough venue on the day requested by the groups — and offered to host the speech on another day.

“Because Mr. Shapiro is welcome on our campus, and we are committed to supporting his, and your, rights to free speech, we very much hope that the BCR and Mr. Shapiro can be flexible when it comes to the timing and location criteria you initially established," the administrator told the group in an email, according to “unedited copies of email messages" that a university spokesman provided to The Hill.

The cancellation marks the latest controversy over speeches from conservative figures at the university. The school was criticized for canceling a speech from right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos after clashes between police and left-wing protesters.

The university later canceled a speech from conservative columnist Ann Coulter and has seen multiple showdowns between leftist protesters and right-wing demonstrators throughout the year.

YAF said in a statement about the Shapiro speech that the Berkeley College Republicans received an email from top administrators who "denied the students’ request for a venue for September 14, 2017, despite what Morris Chaney calls 'extensive efforts.'"

"Berkeley’s inability to find a lecture hall more than two months in advance is laughable," the YAF statement said.

According to the statement, Shapiro also told the group that they "will find a way to get this event done, and UC Berkeley has a moral and legal obligation to ensure we do so.”

Following Coulter's canceled speech, YAF and Berkeley College Republicans sued the school "for placing viewpoint discriminatory restrictions on the time and place conservatives are allowed to speak." With his own event canceled, Yiannopoulos has promised to return to Berkeley later this year for a "Free Speech Week."

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