Another pro-life display was attacked on a campus this week with little response from the university. Students who set up a table on pro-life issues ahead of a speech by Vice President Kamala Harris were surrounded and had to be escorted to safety by campus police. What was missing was any indication that the university would punish those students who shut down the display. Posted videos show students trashing the display and leading to the intervention of campus police. One video from Students for Life shows a group of students chanting “F— ‘dem kids,” “Black Lives Matter” and “Go home.” The counterdemonstrations are themselves protected acts of free speech. However, surrounding the table and vandalizing displays is an effort stop others from speaking or hearing opposing views.Forcing the intervention of the police should result in some action from the university. The school code states “Free speech is central to A&T’s academic mission. The University encourages and supports open, vigorous, and civil debate across the full spectrum of society’s issues.” Yet, these students shutdown a pro-life display and forced the police intervention without any indication that the university will impose any sanctions.
This same situation has played out on various campuses. This year, a videotape showed Hunter College professor Shellyne Rodríguez trashing a pro-life student display in New York. Most were focused on her profanity and vandalism, but there were familiar phrases that appeared in her diatribe to the clearly shocked students.
Before trashing the table, she told the students, “You’re not educating s–t […] This is f–king propaganda. What are you going to do, like, anti-trans next? This is bulls–t. This is violent. You’re triggering my students.”
The videotape revealed one other thing. At Hunter College, and at other colleges, it seems that trashing a pro-life student display and abusing pro-life students is not considered a firing offense. Hunter College refused to fire Rodríguez.
The PSC Graduate Center, the labor organization of graduate and professional schools at the City University of New York, supported that decision and said Rodríguez was “justified” in trashing the display, which the organization described as “dangerously false propaganda” and “disinformation.”
Rodríguez later put a machete to the neck of a reporter, threatened to chop him up and then chased a news crew down a street with the machete in hand. Somewhere between the machete to the neck and chasing the reporters down the street, Hunter College finally decided that Rodríguez had to go.
Rodríguez denounced the school for having “capitulated” to “racists, white nationalists, and misogynists.” She explained that her firing was just a continuation of “attacks on women, trans people, black people, Latinx people, migrants, and beyond.”
Other professors have also engaged in trashing or shutting down pro-life displays.
To have this anti-free speech action taken in advance of a visit by Vice President Kamala Harris is particularly concerning. There has been no statement issued by the Vice President on the need to ensure free expression on both sides of the abortion issue. I imagine that, if a pro-choice display was shut down, the Vice President would have reacted immediately to the denial of free speech.
As a state school, the First Amendment directly applies to the actions and politics of the North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University. While it was not the university that shut down the display, there is the question of its failure to support the exercise of free speech on campus.
Professor Turley,
You continue to ignore book banning on the right.
https://www.ala.org/news/press-releases/2023/09/american-library-association-releases-preliminary-data-2023-book-challenges
The more to ban books has spread from school libraries to public libraries. The link is to the American Library Association, which has documented hundreds of books banning requests across the nation in public libraries. Apparently, in places like Front Royal, VA, right wing groups are hosting book banning BBQs.
If you care about free speech, banning public library books would seemingly be a worthwhile concern.
The American Library Association is run by an avowed Marxist; nothing it says is credible.
Public libraries, just like school libraries, are not required to carry every book in creation, and it is completely lawful for the library’s owners to decide that they don’t want to carry a specific book. If you want to read it, go buy it yourself.
But I don’t believe any of these cases the ALA is complaining about are even removing the books from the library. Usually when the ALA liars complain about it, it turns out the books were merely removed from the children’s section, or sometimes removed from the public shelves and kept behind the counter where you have to ask a librarian for them. There’s nothing unconstitutional about that; a library certainly isn’t required to make filth easily accessible to minors.
Oh, and it is certainly not true that public libraries are “the very embodiment of the First Amendment in our society”. That’s a fatuous and self-serving claim. The first amendment does not require cities to have libraries, and when it was ratified the vast majority of cities did not (did any?).
How about a reply that addressed the subject? So tired of this. Brain washed students think aborting their babies is the right thing here.
There was a Sixth Circuit case which held cops liable for arresting someone threatened by mob violence–cops here should get their asses sued off.
This is why we have a Second Amendment. Seriously. If a mob attacks when you are merely exercising 1A rights, you should get to protect yourself. Not all of us are ex-boxers like me.
Huh? The cops didn’t arrest the victims here, they just refused to arrest their attackers. There are any number of court decisions affirming that the cops have no obligation whatsoever to protect you, let alone to arrest those assaulting you.
“F— ‘dem kids,”
When I watch CNN and MSNBC the talking heads peddle an awful lot of misinformation, like this claim Trump was in cahoots with the Russians. My favorite was the claim Joe Biden “would bring us together”. Biden ran as a moderate, an alternative to the controversial and bombastic Trump, he get’s in office and immediatly moves sharply to the left, implemeting polices not supported by voters (open borders, surrendering in Afghanistan, shutting down US energy production, draconian DEI hiring polices by the federal govt., sex changes for children etc. etc ) and he has the DOJ arrest and prosecute his number one political rival! Joe will bring us together, I mean that claim was so luaghable. If these censors have thier way would they shut down CNN or MSNBC or Rachel Maddow? The talking heads on these shows get the story wrong so much you soemtimes wish somebody would censor them, but I support free press, so we can’t do this
“. . . students trashing the display [. . .] students chanting “F— ‘dem kids,” “Black Lives Matter” and “Go home.”
This headline from the NYT in 1934:
“BROWN SHIRTS RULE THE GERMAN CAMPUS; Life in the Universities, Once Free and Easy, Now Reflects Nazi Regimentation BROWN SHIRTS GOVERN THE GERMAN CAMPUS Student Life in the Universities, Once Marked by Glamour and Freedom, Now Reflects the Nazis’ Zeal for Regimentation”
Different colored shirts, same tactics: Vandalism and violence to destroy dissent. And the same goal: Totalitarian control.
Such is the result of an academic culture that expels reason.
If BLM was true to it’s cause they would not support abortion, most abortions are to black mothers. the founders admitted that BLM was a communist organization, so why would they care?
““F— ‘dem kids,’ ‘Black Lives Matter'”
~+~
Reporter: “What about Black kids? Do their lives matter?”
Protester: “Only if they’s not in da womb.”
40% of African American pregnancies are terminated by abortion, that a sad figure. The current Democratic leaders want to ramp it up on abortion, they want more abortion centers, they want women to be able to abort babies in the 9th month, they want taxpayers to pay for the carnage – the Democrats are pursuing radical policies, I believe. I recall Tom Dashele and Tip O’Neil being extremely lukeward toward abortion, they went along with it for political reasons but they were not ehtusiastic about abortion, they held thier nose, so to speak. The current crop of Democratic leaders love abortion. When Chuck Schurmer get’s up in the morning first thing on his mind is hopw many more babies can I can I kill today. Same with Patty Murray, pro-life people call her baby-killer Patty.
When in the womb they are not Black enough” ?
Oberlin, Stanford, etc,: It often seems that some faculty and administrators are involved with these riotous and despicable students. Find them. Fire them.
What has more value? Your right to speak freely? Or the life of the person who silences you?
That’s like asking, is it farther to New York or by bus? Is it hotter in the summer or the city?
Well, the life of the person who silences the baby according to you ? The life of the person who executes and silences the baby is more important ? The baby has no right to speak freely, your people murdered it with your approval ?
Silencing people is free speech??? That’s twisted.
The police decided that matter, and incorrectly I’d say, since they shut down the pro lifers and hauled them away “to safety” because your whack job baby murdering psychos attacked.
Good thing I’m not in charge because the death culters would be in jail for attacking fellow students and their displays. All those gaggles of police and squad cars (that are in all the videos) would show up and off to the clink for mugshots and fingerprinting and a court date or jail and a bail hearing, or no bail. If it takes 100 or 200 cells, so be it.