Free Speech Talk at U. Denver’s College of Law Requires Security Guards and Threats of Discipline to Proceed
“That’s what higher ed campus culture looks like in 2023”
It has gotten to the point where some students are making a mockery of higher education. This is just insulting.
The College Fix reports:
Five security guards, threats of discipline required to protect free speech talk at DU law school
Conservative legal scholar Ilya Shapiro gave a speech at the University of Denver’s Sturm College of Law on Tuesday, but the effort to ensure it went off without a hitch was Herculean.
Protesters had demanded it be canceled, calling Shapiro a racist. Demonstrations were also planned.
Shapiro, in a statement Tuesday, said it only took “five security guards, strict control of the room at certain times, protesters shunted to designated free speech zones, and the DEI office counterprogrammed with a half-dozen professors talking about critical race theory and structural racism.”
All that, plus the law school dean had threatened students who disrupted the speech with discipline, including potentially flagging their professional licensing, he said.
“That’s what it took for little ‘ol me to give a speech titled ‘Silencing minorities: Free Speech on Campus.’ That’s what higher ed campus culture looks like in 2023,” Shapiro said.
Prior to the speech, “the DU law school’s student chapter of the National Lawyers Guild, a hard-left activist group, has spent the last week ‘demanding’ that the administration ‘cancel’ Shapiro’s speech,” National Review reported:
After some criticism on Twitter, the DU NLG appears to have made the open letter they were circulating private. That now-inaccessible letter, while mentioning in passing the original tweet that prompted Shapiro’s Georgetown cancellation, cited his “attacks on DEI initiatives in higher education” as its primary concern: If “the University and law school believe that diversity, equity, and inclusion are essential components of a world-class education,” it writes, “then it is beyond debate that hosting a staunch opponent of DEI and racial justice initiatives is inconsistent with that mission.” Apparently, DEI — a doctrine that emerged five minutes ago — is now beyond debate; so much so, in fact, that its critics are no longer deserving of access to public forums.
.@UofDenver administrators, campo, and DPD occupying our building to make it safe for racists. Says everything that the admin response to students rising up for anti-racism is to fill the building with cops pic.twitter.com/6W1IODUAgI
— NLG @ DU (@NLGatDenverLaw) March 7, 2023
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Comments
“students rising up for anti-racism …” The dishonesty of this phrasing is a huge part of the problem.
“…some students are making a mockery of higher education.”
Some students are *joining in* in making a mockery of higher education. There, fixed it for you.
Isn’t higher education already a joke–hard to mock that
Apparently, free speech isn’t free. (Hey, that could be a song.)
Serious Q — Who paid for all this? Threats of violence are assault. Can we fine them enough to pay for the overhead they inspired? Seems fair.
Only threats of imminent violence are assault. And I doubt there were any threats of actual violence. Most likely the most anyone actually threatened was to shout him down, as leftists usually do. That’s certainly not assault. It’s likely that everything said in advance of the event was protected speech, which can’t be legally punished (though DU is a private school, and so could discipline it)>
Did you see the video from the Charlie Kirk event in CA? The windows and doors being smashed? We need to stop pretending the leftists aren’t violent.
These highly principled law students should demonstrate their commitment to anti-racism by immediately academically withdrawing from this horrible law school. lest they be tarnished by the stigma of their association with such hatred.
This situation isn’t so new. Speeches were being broken up by the SDS in the late 60’s and early 70’s.
Yes, but back then the cops thought nothing of busting heads when necessary.
Somehow, I don’t imagine any of the protesters will – at least not voluntarily – devote their lives to working out of a storefront helping those who really DO need competent counsel in our nation of justice based on ability to buy it.
Why is it that most Universities will no punish their students for their actions?? Is it just the Money?? How long do you allow the inmates to run the asylum?