George Mason University students push to cancel Gov. Glenn Youngkin's commencement speech
Campus Reform correspondents Ken Meekins and Andrew Frohmiller weigh in on George Mason University students' pushback against Gov. Glenn Youngkin's planned commencement speech.
One of the most uniting parts of the United States should be our core values. That’s no longer the case. A new Wall Street Journal poll shows the collapse of common beliefs that are "very important" to Americans. Not that we needed a poll. All we had to do was visit our college and university campuses that are more like Marxist re-education camps than academic institutions.
Each semester is a mix of censorship, mob scenes and our future leaders screaming at guest speakers. Stanford Law School students heckled and shouted down a federal judge speaking on their campus. A police officer was injured as radicals went nuts over one conservative speaker at another school. And a Wayne State University professor was suspended for writing, "it is far more admirable to kill a racist, homophobic, or transphobic speaker than it is to shout them down."
Now that’s what I call tolerance!
Tirien Steinbach, the Stanford University Law School associate dean of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, slams U.S. Circuit Court Judge Kyle Duncan during his presentation at the school as an invited guest on March 9, 2023. (Screenshot/ Vimeo - Ethics and Public Policy Center)
Wayne State English Professor Steven Shaviro’s killer commentary blasted "right-wing groups" because they "invite such speakers to campus, it is precisely because they want to provoke an incident that discredits the left, and gives more publicity and validation to these reprehensible views than they could otherwise attain."
In short, blame the victim. So far, Shaviro’s been suspended… with pay. Ideally, he’ll soon be begging for a job at the University of Elbonia (the fictional, mud-filled European nation in the "Dilbert'' universe). More likely, he’ll soon be back teaching after his paid vacation.
Radical protesters interrupted Students for Life of America President Kristan Hawkins’ speech at Virginia Commonwealth University on Wednesday. "Antifa came for a fight," said Students for Life of America Executive Vice President Tina Whittington and her group said it recognized several Antifa agitators. The mob, lacking only pitchforks and torches, chanted: "Fascists Go Home," "Nazis Go Home" and "F--- Pro-lifers."
So brave.
Leftist students at Virginia’s George Mason University are actually protesting having their own Gov. Glenn Youngkin as graduation speaker May 18. Seven thousand people signed a petition opposing the governor and, since we are moving into graduation season, we can expect a lot more such idiocy. College students are more fragile than Meghan Markle’s over-inflated ego.
Mason senior Alaina Ruffin whined on the petition, "I and my peers do not want the memories of our graduation day to be tainted by an individual who has harmed and continues to harm the people he serves."
Too bad. Then skip graduation or transfer to one of the even-more leftist institutions in the Ivy League.
The Stanford fiasco was so horrendous, it made national news. Imagine a bunch of future lawyers, desperate for clerkships or jobs, harassing a federal appeals court judge.
For Judge Stuart Kyle Duncan, who dared to be appointed by then-president Donald Trump, "it didn’t go well," in the words of The New York Times. The paper also called it, a "microcosm of today’s political polarization." No, it’s a prime example of how unhinged campus leftists have become.
Let’s let The Times complete the narrative: "Students frequently interrupted him with heckling. One protester called for his daughters to be raped, Duncan said. When he asked Stanford administrators to calm the crowd, the associate dean for diversity, equity and inclusion walked to the lectern and instead began her remarks by criticizing him. ‘For many people here, your work has caused harm,’ she told him."
"Called for his daughters to be raped." At a law school. But he’s the one causing harm? Two U.S. Marshals had to escort him out. That mob is made up of your future prosecutors, legislators and judges. Good luck if you ever get arrested.
The judge wrote a piece for The Wall Street Journal calling the protest "a staged public shaming." But at least there is somewhat of a happy ending in this case.
Law school Dean Jenny S. Martinez wrote a 10-page explanation of her apology to Duncan, including "why the protest violated the university’s policy on disruption." (Duh.) She cites the term "freedom of speech" five separate times and announced the school will hold a "mandatory half-day session in spring quarter for all students on the topic of freedom of speech and the norms of the legal profession." The leftist DEI dean is also "on leave."
If only that attitude were shared across academia.
Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk spoke at UC Davis on March 14, 2023. (KTXL)
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported that University of Pittsburgh students are "demanding that events featuring people from the conservative website Daily Wire and University of Kentucky swimmer Riley Gaines Barker be canceled." The anti-free speech tyrants claimed those speakers "advance a platform of hate and transphobia."
Barker, it’s worth remembering, had to compete in college swimming against the biological male Lia Thomas.
And over at the University of California, Davis, violent leftist protesters tried to stop Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk from speaking. According to The Sacramento Bee, "University officials also said one campus police officer was injured ‘when he was jumped on from behind and pushed to the ground.’"
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Liberals giving peace a chance.
The buildings of the Main Quadrangle and Hoover Tower on the campus of Stanford University in Palo Alto, California. (David Madison/Getty Images)
Stanford made a point of opposing the "heckler’s veto," where a loud enough crowd prevents someone from speaking. But that is exactly what is going at campuses across the nation – with administrators, faculty and students.
Administrators fill their campuses with so-called scholars to the left of Karl Marx. Those faculty then indoctrinate the willing or already woke students, leaving only a handful of others who stand up to the mob. And that mob then bullies any who dare oppose groupthink, like a remake of "Children of the Corn."
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Leftists freak out that conservatives have turned against academia. The Wall Street Journal poll shows we aren’t alone. More than half of Americans don’t think a college degree is worth it. And across the board, they support a more conservative take on schools.
If graduates realize elite leftists are the reason they owe so much student debt and have such useless degrees, then those cushy Ivory Tower jobs are doomed.