Update: My college finally let that conservative commentator speak after banning him twice

Our student government invited John Smith last year for a free speech forum and the admin shut it down. Then they tried to reschedule him for this spring and got blocked again. Third time was the charm though - he spoke last Thursday in a small lecture hall with about 60 people there. No protests, no drama, just a Q&A that actually got into policy differences. Has anyone else seen a campus reverse course on a speaker ban?

2 comments

2 Comments

margaretw4117d ago

I was at a small liberal arts college back in 2019 when we invited a guy from the Federalist Society to talk about campus free speech... the administration cancelled him twice before we finally got a room in the student union. They claimed it was a "security risk" but there were maybe 40 of us there and zero problems, just a lot of back and forth about whether safe spaces really help or hurt learning. The whole thing made me feel like the school was more afraid of bad press than actually listening to different ideas... it's nice to hear your school finally came around even if it took three tries.

xenarobinson17d ago

Used to roll my eyes at these stories but yeah, this actually makes a good point.