On Wednesday, a university student from the United Kingdom contacted Dave Rubin to inform him that when the student was watching a video of Rubin interviewing Daily Wire Editor-in-Chief Ben Shapiro, he was allegedly reprimanded. Rubin, because the student wished to remain anonymous, tweeted parts of the student’s message to him; it read:
As already mentioned in message, I got reported by someone (or many, I don’t know) for watching “disturbing, hateful content” in university premises and received an email from faculty course officer who wanted to be summoned for a “student meeting.” That’s when I wrote you for suggestions how to perhaps defend myself in few words as I am not really experienced with such situations … instead of talking to me about this “incident” on the meeting, just approached me (the course officer along with Diversity officer) right before the meeting day – saying that “we don’t want such a silly incident be reported and minuted in meeting and forever be in university archives, so we will talk to you straight. You watch whatever you want at your home but our university is not a place of political commentaries for uncertified sources. We don’t want our students be engaged in divisive and hateful videos, whether from extremist channels or channels giving platforms to alt-right people and others who are engaged in parlarisation and spreading of hate.”
I did not know what to say, that was what I could remember from their obviously nicely pre-prepared speech and after that I wrote on my phone not to forget. I tried to reason with them saying that I am listening to people with different opinions on topics I am interested, I said that those videos are not Nazi or communist or extremist recruiting videos, they are just interviews. Why are they classified and put along with hateful content that you speak of?
Rubin added:
The student noted:
Rubin asked for support for the student:
One person among those who noted the lunacy of the perspective that Shapiro and Rubin were alt-right extremists tweeted:
The student answered: