The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) urged San Francisco State University to investigate the recent censorship and physical harassment of champion collegiate swimmer Riley Gaines, a supporter of protecting female sports from men who identify as transgender, at the hands of leftist students.
Gaines, a recent University of Kentucky graduate, spent several hours barricaded at San Francisco State University after she delivered an address for Turning Point USA. She reported on social media that she was “ambushed and physically hit twice by a man” as she attempted to leave a room with the assistance of police officers.
FIRE, a legal advocacy group that defends free speech, lambasted San Francisco State University administrators after they said “the First Amendment was honored” at the event and insisted the demonstrators “peacefully” expressed their views.
“It is alarming that this level of mob censorship and pugnacity occurred on a campus bound to respect students’ constitutional right to free expression,” the organization wrote in a letter addressed to San Francisco State University President Lynn Mahoney. “Failure to properly address such disruptions ratifies an unconstitutional ‘heckler’s veto’ and will only incentivize more threats to students’ freedom of speech and deter them from hosting potentially controversial speakers on campus. When those opposed to speakers or their message target such events for disruption, educational institutions must respond with ‘bona fide efforts’ to protect expressive rights.”
Students assembled to demonstrate against Gaines shouted slogans such as “trans rights are human rights” and suggested that she pay them in order to secure safe passage off of the campus. Gaines presently works with the Independent Women’s Forum to raise awareness about the risks that radical gender theorists pose to women.
Rising backlash against critics of radical transgender activism comes as Republican governors and legislators advance bills to protect female sports leagues and outlaw sex change procedures for minors, noting the permanent damage that surgeries and cross-sex hormones can render. Other bills passed by Republican states prohibit sexually suggestive drag shows in public or near children.
“This incident, and other similar disruptions at schools nationwide, make clear that maintaining strong free expression policies is not enough, independently, to ensure expressive freedoms,” the letter from FIRE continued. “Universities must educate their students on their First Amendment rights and those of other students, faculty, and members of the campus community. To protect free speech and ensure their educational communities’ safety, universities must clarify that the use of force or mob rule to silence speech is not an exercise in free speech.”
The censorship of Gaines is one of several recent instances of mob rule at prominent universities. Fifth Circuit Judge Kyle Duncan was verbally accosted by student protesters and a diversity administrator at Stanford Law School as he attempted to deliver a lecture at a Federalist Society event, prompting Stanford University President Marc Tessier-Lavigne to offer an apology to Duncan and reiterate free expression policies to students.
“Universities are called on to be places of vigorous and thoughtful inquiry, not only of ideas palatable to the mainstream, but of a broad array of ideas, including challenges to mainstream views,” the administrator wrote. “Our role is to provide knowledge, nuance, and an approach based in truth-seeking and reasoned discussion.”