Last week, Jason Reilly, a black conservative who has written on race relations for the Wall Street Journal for over twenty years and lectured on college campuses for nearly that long, saw his invitation to speak at Virginia Tech rescinded after he had been invited to speak by a member of the faculty roughly one month ago.
As Riley writes, the professor who issued the initial invitation backtracked, “citing concerns from his department head and other faculty members that my writings on race in The Wall Street Journal would spark protests.”
Riley explains that his lectures attempt to educate students about black history in the united stated in the first half of the 20th century vis-à-vis employment, schooling, crime and parenting. He illustrates how “positive black trends either slowed dramatically or reversed course beginning in the 1960s.”
But Riley now finds himself one of a number of conservatives who are persona non grata at these institutions; he notes “a 2010 report by the Association of American Colleges and Universities found that only 40% of college freshman ‘strongly agreed that it is safe to hold unpopular positions on campus’ and that by senior year it’s down to 30%.”
The Foundation for Individual Rights In Education (FIRE) stated in 2014 that a fifteen-year study found “speakers are much more likely to be targeted for disinvitation for holding or expressing viewpoints perceived as conservative by faculty or students… disinvitation incidents occur with nearly equal frequency among public, private, and sectarian schools, demonstrating that disinvitations are not isolated to any particular type of university … institutions that have seen the highest number of disinvitation incidents also maintain severely speech-restrictive policies.” Most importantly, FIRE found “successful disinvitations from the left of speakers are nearly double those from the right of speakers, with nearly triple the total number of disinvitation incidents.”
Some recent high-profile disinvitations include former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice rejected by Rutgers University because of her role prosecuting the Iraq war and human-rights activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali rejected by Brandeis University over her criticism of Islam.
“Successful disinvitations from the left of speakers are nearly double those from the right of speakers, with nearly triple the total number of disinvitation incidents.”
Foundation for Individual Rights In Education
Riley concludes:
In April, I spoke at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where the college Republicans who invited me took the precaution of clearing my name with liberal student groups “to make sure they wouldn’t be upset.” We’ve reached a point where conservatives must have their campus speakers preapproved by left-wing pressure groups. If progressives aren’t already in absolute control of academia, they’re pretty close.