College officials are ‘cowards’ for not enforcing free speech: Ilya Shapiro
A former law professor said university officials need to enforce their own policies after students and educators heckled a judge and stopped his remarks.
Student government at Northwestern University in Illinois "indefinitely" froze the funds of the university's chapter of College Republicans amid backlash to posters advertising an event with a conservative speaker.
The university's Associated Student Government (ASG) last week passed "emergency legislation" by a large majority that cut off funding for the Northwestern University College Republicans (NUCR), according to the Daily Northwestern.
The move reportedly came in response to controversial flyers that advertised a May 2 event the organization hosted with conservative speaker James Lindsay, an author and leading critic of critical race theory. His speech covered the perils of Marxism and transgenderism, according to the Post Millennial.
One of the posters, which noted the event with Lindsay was also presented by the school's chapter of Young Americans for Freedom (YAF), depicted a skull-and-bones poison symbol superimposed over an LGBT pride flag framed in sunglasses, according to the student newspaper.
Lindsay told the Post Millennial that "woke" students at the school apparently took the flyer as "a death threat."
"A kid showed it to me, and the first thing I said was, 'Oh, that's the poison symbol, not a threat. If you were educated here you'd know that,'" he told the outlet. "The Leftist agitators on the rather embarrassing campus convinced the Leftist student government to freeze their funding based on the use of the internationally recognized poison icon on the flyer, claiming it represents death threats against 'LGBTQ.' Designer is gay himself."
Molly Whalen, a junior who serves as co-president of ASG, told the Daily Northwestern that they froze the funds because the flyers were allegedly in violation of the university's Policy on Discrimination & Harassment, which prohibits the display of "offensive objects and pictures that are based on a protected class."
The Weber Arch at Northwestern University on Nov. 13, 2020, in Evanston, Illinois. Northwestern graduate student workers voted to unionize after years of organizing. (Jose M. Osorio/Chicago Tribune/Tribune News Service via Getty Images)
"We can’t prevent a speaker from coming to campus as student government. That’s done by administration," Whalen said. "We focused on the part that we could control, which is student group conduct and student group finances."
Weinberg College freshman Malik Rice, who serves as ASG’s co-executive officer of justice and inclusion, helped write the legislation and said ASG has a duty to amplify the voices of the marginalized.
"There is a side of injustice and [one of justice]," he said. "ASG does not want to be on the side of injustice."
The funds will reportedly remain frozen until university officials investigate to determine if the posters violated the harassment policy.
Agustin Bayer, the acting president of NUCR, claimed to the College Fix that their organization had not been told about the ASG meeting that saw their funding pulled.
"They did not reach out to us regarding their concern over the advertisement before the event, nor did they invite us to speak for ourselves at the meeting, and in fact they still haven’t even officially notified us of their decision," Bayer told the College Fix. "We only learned of their move from the school paper when they asked us for comment."
Bayer told the Daily Northwestern that they consider the ASG's move as "an attempt to kill our freedom of expression and speech at Northwestern."
Quadrangle bordered by fraternities on the campus of Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. (Chicago Tribune via Getty Images)
Northwestern University spokesperson Jon Yates said in the lead-up to the event with Lindsay that while "the speaker’s views do not align with Northwestern’s commitment to diversity and inclusion, they are protected by free speech and free expression."
Legal scholar and Fox News contributor Jonathan Turley, an alumnus of Northwestern University, was also critical of the student government's actions and wrote on his website Tuesday that his alma mater "has long been a school hostile to free speech."
"It is doubtful that other groups from the College Democrats to Black Lives Matter to pro-choice groups would be sanctioned for using the common symbol to express their opposition to the MAGA movement or racism or pro-life positions," Turley wrote.
George Washington University professor and Fox News contributor Jonathan Turley wrote that Northwestern University "has long been a school hostile to free speech." (Fox News)
"I do not like the imagery and I expect that I do not agree with some of Lindsey’s views. However, the action taken by the board was legitimately called out by the writer as an attack on his free speech," Turley continued, later adding that "the university will have to do more than be a pearl-clutching pedestrian when confronted by such attacks on a free speech."
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Neither Northwestern University nor its student government immediately responded to Fox News Digital's request for comment.
