In our day and age, free speech is becoming a lot more costly.  No longer are college campuses the hub of discussion they were once prided to be. Now, college campuses are becoming liberal havens for oppression of free speech that they do not agree with.  Conservative speakers on college campuses are becoming less and less frequent, and it has become a sad trend that when these conservative speakers are invited, they are often pressured to pull out of the event.  Conservative student groups across the country are being pressured to disinvite these speakers, likely to replace them with liberal speakers who won’t offend their delicate sensitivities.

 

No longer are colleges a hive for free speech and discussion, but are consistently becoming more and more oppressive of speech that they do not agree with.  No longer are students hearing a diversity of thoughts and ideas on their campuses, but instead are being indoctrinated by the left to continue this growing tradition of oppression and speech restriction.

Below are just a few examples of the countless speakers who have been dis-invited from college campuses for their beliefs and ideas.

1) George Will

Mr. Will was disinvited from Scripps College for an article he wrote about rape on college campuses. Will expressed an opinion that college campuses have been making victimhood a privileged status.  According to Scripps representative, Will was disinvited because of his views in that article, which questioned the validity of a specific sexual assault case. For the record, that specific assault case did not involve Scripps College.

Of course, college campuses have every right to decide what speakers they bring to campus. The irony in this incident is that George Will was invited to speak through the Malott Public Affairs Program specifically to highlight a diversity of ideas and thoughts. It seems however, that Mr. Will’s ideas were just too diverse for Scripps College.

 

2) Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Aayan Hirsi Ali is an outspoken anit-Islam speaker, a victim of childhood female genital mutilation, and a female right’s activist.  She was scheduled to receive an honorary degree from Brandeis University, but that offer was rescinded when Brandeis University apparently became aware of Ms. Ali’s beliefs.  The university gave a statement that included the line “We cannot overlook certain of her past statements that are inconsistent with Brandeis University’s core values”.

Ms. Ali, who has never hidden her views, was clearly not very well vetted by Brandeis before they decided to offer her an honorary degree. Likely, Brandeis was just jumping on the bandwagon of honoring the brave Ms. Ali, who is a survivor of Islam and Female Genital Mutilation and is speaking out against injustices she has personally experienced. Not only did Brandeis University’s decision show how intolerant they were to views different from their own, but they revealed how ignorant they were when initially offering this degree to Ms. Ali, since her statements were always very clear and public.

 

3) Michelle Malkin

In 2004, Michelle Malkin was becoming well known for her latest book that detailed her support of Japanese internment during World War II and how it corresponded to racial profiling in the current War on Terror. Around that time, she was invited to speak at American University by the campus Republicans.

Shortly before her speech was set to be given, it was canceled.  It appears that Malkin’s views were just not right for the time (an election ear) and that the group had no idea that Malkin would be speaking about internment. I find that very hard to believe, considering she had just come out with a book about the issue.

 

4) Nonie Darwish

In November of 2009, Nonie Darwish was scheduled to give a talk at Princeton University titled “Shari Law and Perspectives on Islam”.  To set the record straight, Nonie is a former Muslim who has experience with the topics she is speaking about.  She was, as you can imagine, disinvited from Princeton due to pressure from groups such as Tigers for Israel, Princeton Committee on Palestine, and the Whig-Clisophic Society. The Muslim Life Coordinator and Chaplain at the university also championed Darwish’s disinvitation.

‘I, for one, find it interesting that a religious leader would work to suppress someone else’s religious freedom on a campus that is supposed to be an institute for higher learning, but maybe that is just me.  For the record, Darwish arguments are not entirely original, and are often adaptations of the works of many Muslim scholars. Nonetheless, Darwish was originally invited to speak at Princeton and later dis-invited. I can’t imagine that she suddenly changed her point of view and that is why the event was cancelled. Rather, it seems as if the university gave into demands from student groups to suppress another student group.

 

            As someone who has heard the majority of these individuals speak, I am here to say that I saw those events, in which they were allowed to speak, go off without a hitch. Yes, what these speakers have to say may be controversial to some, but I do not want to live in a sheltered bubble where my college decides what ideas I am allowed to hear and what ideas I am not. It is time to stand up to disinvitation and fight to diversity of ideas and voices on college campuses.

Aryssa D

FFL Cabinet Member

Read more articles