Protesters are threatening to show up and shut down The Daily Wire podcast host Michael Knowles’ upcoming debate on transgenderism.
Knowles is set to debate transgenderism and womanhood with Deirdre McCloskey, a well-known trans-identifying economics professor. The event is hosted by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute and will be held at the University of Pittsburgh on the evening of April 18.
On Tuesday, Twitter user “Norman” encouraged his nearly 33,000 followers to show up to the event and shut down the debate between Knowles and McCloskey.
“The university of pittsburgh is hosting this man on campus! it would be a shame if absolutely everyone showed up, disrupted and shut it down at 7:30pm on April 18th at the William Pitt Union,” Norman tweeted.
Norman was responding to a viral video of Knowles speaking at CPAC this past weekend. In his remarks, Knowles said that “transgenderism must be eradicated.” His comment was misquoted by several left-leaning news outlets who claimed Knowles had called for transgender people themselves to be eradicated.
“Show up!!! shut it DOWN!! email pitt!!!” Norman added in another tweet, along with screenshots of the debate event page showing the date and time.
“ALSO it would be really a shame if you spammed their even[t] registration with fake names/info,” Norman added in another tweet that included a link to the registration page.
Protesters heeded the call and spammed the registration page to the Knowles debate with fake names until it sold out. Many of the names used were crass, including “Suck My Girlc**k,” “Moe Lester,” “Anna Bortion,” and “Gof*** Yerself” from “ANTIFA University.”
Twitter users commented on the original tweet about throwing eggs at Knowles, taking a road trip to the university to protest the debate, and taking the day off work. One Twitter user who appears to use “they” pronouns encouraged protesters to follow the university’s rules about protesting peacefully, to which another Twitter user responded, “no.”
Knowles remarked that the protesters seem to be afraid of hearing what he has to say.
“My debate opponent is a distinguished professor with three degrees from Harvard, countless scholarly publications, and six honorary doctorates,” Knowles told The Daily Wire. “And still the transgenderists appear hellbent on keeping me from articulating the argument against transgender ideology. It’s almost as if they’re afraid I’ll win the debate.”
ISI declined to comment on the social media efforts to shut down the debate.
The University of Pittsburgh has not yet made a statement about the pressure from protesters to refuse to host the event on campus.
McCloskey is a Harvard-trained economics professor who has taught at the University of Illinois at Chicago since 2000. McCloskey began identifying as female at the age of 53 in 1995. Now, the professor self-describes as a “literary, quantitative, postmodern, free-market, progressive-Episcopalian, ex-Marxist, Midwestern woman from Boston who was once a man. Not ‘conservative’! I’m a Christian classical liberal.”
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Last year, LGBT activists threatened to show up and shut down a speech by Daily Wire host Matt Walsh at Texas A&M University.
After their elaborate plan to infiltrate and protest Walsh’s remarks was leaked, the protesters were largely a no-show. The plan involved activists wearing “business-casual” and “cisgender and heterosexual-passing” to blend in with Walsh’s supporters and smuggling in flags as well as speakers to amplify chanting. Also included were detailed instructions on where to sit and when to start chanting and walking out, raising one fist in the air.
At the event, only one individual purportedly from the group that planned to protest Walsh’s speech made an appearance. He shared that he actually agreed with much of what Walsh said.