That conservative professor got uninvited and I finally saw I was defending the wrong thing

I used to think banning a speaker was always bad, no matter what. Then my school canceled a guy who said undocumented students should be deported, and I felt relieved. That's when it hit me that free speech doesn't mean you have to platform hate speech, especially when it targets half your campus. Does protecting students from harmful rhetoric outweigh the principle of letting anyone speak? I'm curious where you all draw that line.

2 comments

2 Comments

kevin_carr1d ago

Man, I had almost the exact same wake up call at my school. They disinvited some guy who said gay students were pushing an "agenda" in the classroom, and I was honestly relieved too. It's like... you hear all this talk about free speech being sacred, but when the speech is just straight up calling for people to be hurt or erased, it's not really a debate anymore. Protecting the students who actually have to live with that hate feels way more important than some abstract principle about letting anyone talk. It's just common sense when you see the actual damage it does.

the_eva1d ago

Exactly. That "agenda" line is just a dog whistle for hate speech.