This week I wrote a column on how Antifa and related groups are destroying free speech at academic institutions across the country with the help of enabling, sympathetic faculty. I just saw this earlier video from a few months ago of an assault near the law school on our campus. Antifa activists harassed a conservative Rebel filmmaker, Jack Posobiec, and then a young man assaulted him. The man was later identified asSydney Ramsey-LaRee, 24. When GW police intervene, the attacker immediately claims to be the victim in the video below. I was unaware of this earlier assault and wanted to share the video. Fortunately, we have not seen the type of violence at other universities like Berkeley.
Free Speech
The Public Safety Pretext: Liberal Leaders and Writers Seek To Protect The Public From Free Speech
Below is my column in the Hill Newspaper on the call of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi to cancel the permit of a conservative group seeking to hold a “Patriot Prayer” event in San Francisco. As discussed in the posting today on Berkeley Mayor Jesse Arreguin’s call to end a Free Speech event, leaders are latching on to a new way to limit speech. While professing fealty to free speech, Pelosi, Arraguin, and others seek to deny it on the basis for how critics might react. The West has grown weary of Free Speech and these are the voices calling for greater restraints and regulation of speech. It is the new anti-speech pretext: leaders seek to protect the public from free speech in the name of public safety.
Here is the column:
Berkeley Mayor Objects To Those Trying To Block Free Speech Events So He Asks For Free Speech Week To Be Cancelled
Yesterday, I posted a column on the violence of Antifa protesters and their war on free speech. Judging from the actions of Berkeley Mayor Jesse Arreguin they appear to be succeeding. After Antifa and counterprotesters chased and beat people trying to attend the event this week, Arreguin immediately came up with a solution to their denial of free speech: cancel the free speech event. That is like solving bank robbery by asking banks to empty their vaults.
Germany Bans Antifa Website As An Extremist Forum
I recently wrote about the dangerous calls to treat protesters as “domestic terrorists.” Most these calls focused on the neo-Nazis but the recent move by German authorities against Antifa shows that groups on the left can also be targeted by such actions. The Antifa website has been barred due to the violent role played by their members at the G20 summit in Hamburg. The Interior Ministry accused Antifa of seeking to “legitimize violence against police officers. which he described as an “expression of an attitude that tramples human dignity.”
Iowa Professor Under Fire Over Proposal For Exposing Her Students “White Ignorance”
University of Iowa Assistant Professor Jodi Linley is under fire for an article in a “peer-reviewed academic journal” in which she pledged to expose her students to “their own white ignorance.” She says that she used her “identities as a queer, able-bodied, cisgender woman” to offer a “teaching paradigm” that strips away white privilege. She segregates by race and works toward “interrupting oppression” that occurs in classroom settings. Continue reading
Clemson Professor Under Fire For Calling All Republicans “Racist Scum”
We have been discussing the disciplining of professors for their statements on social media and the concern that there are different standards being applied in such cases. As many of you know, I take a robust view of free speech rights and have been critical of the monitoring and punishment of teachers for expressing their political and social views outside of campus. The latest such controversy comes from Clemson University where Assistant Professor Bart Knijnenburg went on Facebook to call Trump supporters and Republicans generally “racist scum.”
Making Terror “The Order Of The Day”: Charlottesville Leads To Call For Opposing Groups To Be Declared Terrorists
Below is my column in the Hill Newspaper on the call from both the right and the left for protesters to be declared domestic terrorists. With rising anger over protests and counter protests, politicians are rushing to join calls for the government to not simply investigate these groups for hate speech but actually terrorism.
Here is the column:
