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Free Speech Tag

I have to admit, I fell asleep at the baker's wheel. Masterpiece Cakeshop, Ltd. v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission was argued to the Supreme Court earlier this month and I, didn't cover it. Not out of lack of interest, but more feeling like we're chasing a swarm of daily dust ups created by (1) Trump Derangement Syndrome in all its many and varied forms, (2) Trump on Twitter, (3) media reacting to Trump on Twitter, (4) Alabama, (5) War on Women and #MeTwo, (6) Men at Work, (7) the End of the World. Plus, it was end of the semester, and things were busy. Excuses, I've had a few.

An excellent Open Letter to the President of the Vassar College from a Vassar alumnus, published in the student newspaper, is a must read as to what happened when I spoke at Vassar on "hate speech" and free speech. President Elizabeth Bradley's response is here. That letter exchange was the subject of my post, Alum to Vassar College President: “You owe Professor Jacobson a public apology”, which has even more detailed background. That letter exchange also caused me to go back and look at a letter from the Executive Board of the Vassar Student Association (the student government) to Vassar's President, demanding my appearance be cancelled. After lodging a series of accusations against me, the VSA letter concluded:

Back in May, we wrote about a Students for Life group at Fresno State University. They had written some pro-life messages on a campus sidewalk in chalk. A professor approached them and argued they had no right to do so. He even took measures to remove the messages.

Here at LI, we've covered the increasing, alarming, and widespread leftist intolerance for free speech in this country.  The radical left has decided and worked diligently to spread the dangerous notion that any ideas they deem offensive or objectionable should not be expressed, and if they are, there is the growing sense that violence should be used to silence anyone speaking words with which they disagree. What we haven't seen as often is what everyone else feels about the far left's increasingly fascistic approach to silencing any but their own speech.  It turns out that Americans are generally pretty fed up with it, and that there is a growing sense that we cannot express our true thoughts or views.

Bassem Eid is a Palestinian human rights activist, who argues that the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement is a sham that harms Palestinians. Eid is a frequent speaker in the United States, including on college campuses. Eid presents a Palestinian point of view not often heard on campuses, where radical faculty and student groups place all blame for the conflict on Israel. In this short video, Eid addresses BDS:

Healing to Action is the Vassar College student group which organized the incitement against me by making false claims that the campus was in danger by my lecture on "hate speech" and free speech. The fabricated claims included that I was posting event information on multiple White Nationalist websites in order to bring people to campus to target minorities, LGBT and Jewish students. The details of those false claims are documented in these posts:

I'm still trying to get my mind around the Vassar College campus reaction to my planned lecture on "hate speech" and free speech, which I wrote about in Safe Spaces and Safety Teams at Vassar College for My Lecture on Free Speech. Hundreds of students, faculty and staff were whipped into a frenzy by factually false accusations against me and regarding my appearance. There were many false accusations. In this post, I'll address just one aspect, that I supposedly posed a threat to campus safety.