Faculty and Students at Washington and Lee U. ‘Sign Petition Against Matt Walsh Appearance’
“just one example of W&L’s disregard for those with minority identities on campus”
It’s as if the recent shout down at Stanford Law never happened. Instead of being ashamed or embarrassed, progressives are doubling down on silencing others.
The College Fix reports:
More than 600 Washington and Lee students, faculty sign petition against Matt Walsh appearance
Over 600 students and faculty at Washington and Lee University have signed on to a petition calling for conservative commentator Matt Walsh to be banned from speaking on March 30.
According to The W&L Spectator, “multiple professors from different departments” have asked students to sign the petition — even during classes.
The petition alleges Washington and Lee “continues to approve speaker events that provide one-sided platforms for harmful ideologies” — and that are in direct contradiction to the school’s DEI (diversity, equity, inclusion) commitments.
“Hosting Matt Walsh’s upcoming ‘What is a Woman’ event on March 30th is just one example of W&L’s disregard for those with minority identities on campus,” the petition reads. “In his recent Tweets, [Walsh] repeatedly and intentionally misgenders well-known trans TikTok creator Dylan Mulvaney, and he refers to trans women as “men dressed in womanface” on his YouTube channel.”
The petitioners claim they’re not against Walsh’s “right to speech” — they just want W&L officials to show they do not support his “violent words.”
“While W&L’s Facility Use Policy states that allowing an event on campus does not imply endorsement of the views shared at the event,” the petition continues, “the school cannot escape responsibility for providing a platform for one-sided, non-academic, harmful rhetoric.”
The Spectator notes English Professor Brenna Womer (pictured), the first faculty member to sign the petition who uses the pronouns “she/they,” sent an email to colleagues stating Walsh “is an extremely dangerous person who represents a very real threat of physical violence against trans and nonbinary people specifically, but also to all women, queer people, and people of color.”
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Comments
Since there are about 2600 students and faculty at W&L, that means that about 2000 of them did not sign the petition and presumably want to here what Walsh has to say.
It is more like this
Every university has a cadre of leftist activists, a tiny portion of Republicans (who aren’t activists but are there to advance some kind of career and keeping their heads down) and a vast and overwhelming majority who know about what is happening at the moment (including the speech and likely who Matt Walsh is in this case) but who really don’t care even if they are Democrats.
To mast college students acing their finals comes first, followed by how they are paying for college to advance their future careers followed by social and extra curricular activity with political activity being extremely distant after that if it is on there at all.
You are right to say there are more Republican College student voters than you would think, but as very few of them would choose listening to a Matt Walsh speech live over getting their homework/studying done.
Or, didn’t know of the existence of the petition in the first place. They were liikely going to class, in the library, or back in their rooms studying.
They all know about the appearance because of the 600 opposing it, most as you said just don’t care at all.
Or are afraid to go against the woke mob, which apparently includes faculty who will allow their classes to be interrupted for this petition.
Professor Wormer? 🙂 Sounds suspiciously like the Dean’s name in “Animal House.” And I sure she maintains the same high levels of reasonableness, good will and good faith.
“Instead of being ashamed or embarrassed, progressives are doubling down on silencing others.”
Why shouldn’t they? The tactic has the highest success rate in history.
There are never consequences for the left, only the right.
The students at Stanford may have no consequences if we don’t know their names. The law school dean basically implied she’d be happy to expel them but they would have a strong legal case against it because of that assistant dean’s encouragement of the riot. The assistant dean got fired, which is something, and it’s a start.
1. Matt Walsh doesn’t espouse violent speech. 2. Maybe I am wrong about this, but didn’t Dylan Mulvaney just turn trans about a year ago after several other attempts to get noticed nationally fizzled? 3. Gender dysphoria is a mental disorder that used to be very rare and mostly affected men who felt like they were a woman, until a very recent epidemic of gender dysphoria that seems to be of woman feeling like men. It seems to me that treatment should start with a psychiatrist not hormone treatments and a surgeon. Women on testosterone in most cases is a bad idea. Telling adolescent children that they can change their gender is and celebrating it, might not be the proper course of action for some if not most of these kids. Especially since it would seem that it has become an adolescent fad! Some mental health counseling along with maybe maturing into adulthood before life altering treatments, therapies and surgeries might not be a bad idea for the vast numbers of them that think it would be cool or are just experiencing normal adolescent body image anxieties. Isn’t the Hippocratic oath something like “First do no harm?”