A recent <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/catholic-university-blocks-matt-walsh-from-speaking-on-campus" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Matt Walsh</a> appearance at New Mexico State University upset two New Mexico state senators so much that they are now asking the university to address the “policies” that allowed Walsh to speak on campus. 
Democratic State Sens. Carrie Hamblen and William Soules, along with seven other state, county, and municipal government officials, signed the letter last month addressed to the NMSU Board of Regents interim president. In the letter, the officials expressed their “extreme disappointment” that the university allowed Walsh to <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DWwPdkzatkQ" target="_blank" rel="noopener">speak on campus</a> at a Young Americans for Freedom (YAF) event in April. 
The letter, first <a href="https://yaf.org/news/state-senator-wants-to-ban-conservative-speakers-after-successful-matt-walsh-yaf-lecture/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">reported</a> by Young America’s Foundation, accused Walsh of “encouraging violence” and “spouting racist and pro-slavery rhetoric.” The officials also accused Walsh of “minimizing accusations against known pedophiles and child abusers” without providing any basis to level the accusation. 
“As you prepare for new students coming in the fall, we would welcome a serious conversation about the rationale for allowing this type of event that would knowingly frighten and harm part of the student population, learn who in the administration supported this, and what policies or actions will be taken in the future to prevent further emotional and psychological damage to some of the most vulnerable in your student population,” the letter states. 
As noted by Young America’s Foundation, NMSU’s status as a public university means it had no basis to prevent Walsh from speaking on campus after he had been invited by the club that went through all the proper channels to host the event. 
“NMSU had a responsibility to shield the trans and queer individuals, many of whom were disregarded when expressing their concerns and fears because of the Walsh event,” the letter adds, citing <a href="https://www.krqe.com/news/politics-government/legislature/governor-expands-human-rights-act-in-new-mexico/#:~:text=House%20Bill%20207%20clarifies%20the,%2C%20disabilities%2C%20and%20sexual%20orientation." target="_blank" rel="noopener">House Bill 207</a>, which requires the state&#8217;s Human Rights Act to apply to all New Mexico government agencies, institutions, cities, counties, and public contractors. The bill also adds definitions for sex, gender, gender identity, disabilities, and sexual orientation to the Human Rights Act. 
Interim President Jay Gouge reportedly asked Jewel Navarette, the chairwoman of the NMSU YAF, to meet with him and Hamblen. Navarette said she and her fellow conservative students will continue to stand up for their First Amendment rights.  
“We will continue to fight for the right to free speech and expression on our campus,” she said. “These public officials have no right to say what kind of ideas can or cannot be expressed at NMSU.”
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The letter was also signed by state Rep. Angelica Rubio; Lac Cruces Council Mayor Pro Tem Kasandra Gandara; Las Cruces City Councilors Becky Corran, Johana Bencomo, and Becki Graham; and Dona Ana County Commissioners Shannon Reynolds and Christopher Schaljo-Hernandez.

Matt Walsh

State Senators Call On University To ‘Prevent’ More Emotional ‘Damage’ After Being Triggered By Matt Walsh Speech On Campus 

State Senators Call On University To 'Prevent' More Emotional 'Damage' After Being Triggered By Matt Walsh Speech On Campus 

Free Speech

New Mexico

Politics

Young America's Foundation

Young Americans for Freedom

Asked by the Young Americans for Freedom chapter on his campus if he would act as an advisor for the group, a political professor at Penn State University (PSU) instead ripped YAF, seemingly blaming the organization for the breach at the U.S. Capitol on January 6.
Professor Pete Hatemi sent an email to Penn State&#8217;s YAF chapter saying, “Under no condition, would I support any group that has an implied or explicit support for Trump, racism, sexism, or indifference to democratic values, including peace, liberty, freedom, and justice for all peoples,” adding, “I question if your national organization has some responsibility for recent actions.”
After politely thanking Hatemi for his response, PSU YAF chairman John Stafford fired back:
<blockquote>I find your response insulting, not only towards YAF, but the entirety of the conservative movement. … YAF is a 501(c)(3) organization, therefore it cannot and has not ever endorsed candidates/political parties. … Your suggestion that YAF somehow is responsible for the violence at the Capitol last week is unsubstantiated. YAF has never advocated for violence, and to assert such a claim with no evidence or research is dishonorable. National YAF publicly condemned the violence that occurred.
Finally, the assumptions that you made are nothing but biased. You spent the majority of your email attacking my organization and wrongly assuming that we belong to an absurd narrative of violence and chaos, but you never once asked me about the organization or my motivations. I encourage you to research the history of YAF before falsely maligning it. I will continue my search for a chapter advisor to ensure that my YAF chapter has a strong presence on Penn State’s campus — promoting freedom and standing against false narratives like your own.</blockquote>
Stafford told YAF, “College is supposed to be a place where I am free to listen and learn. Yet my experience has been filled with roadblocks and professors limiting me to the realms of their own ideologies. I am proud to be a member of YAF — I will not speak quietly or amend my beliefs.”
“It is Penn State YAF’s constitutional right to exist on campus — whether this professor likes it or not,” YAFD’s Kara Zupkus <a href="https://www.yaf.org/news/penn-state-prof-under-no-condition-would-i-support-yaf-chapter-accuses-yaf-of-responsibility-for-capitol-riot/">wrote</a>. “To attack all conservative students and YAF by accusing them of supporting riots and violence with no evidence is disgraceful and unbecoming of a professor at an institution of higher education. Now is the time for healing in our nation, and this professor and many others are only further stoking the flames of division with baseless accusations and attempts to censor true conservative speech.”
Penn State’s <a href="https://polisci.la.psu.edu/people/pkh11">bio of Hatemi</a> reads:
<blockquote>I am Distinguished Professor of Political Science, Co Fund in Microbiology and Biochemistry at Penn State. My research currently focuses on explicating individual differences in preferences, decision-making, and social behaviors on a wide range of topics, including: political behaviors and attitudes, addiction, political violence and terrorism, public health, gender identification, religion, mate selection, and the nature of interpersonal relationships. In so doing I advocate theoretical and methodological pluralism …</blockquote>

Sundial on Penn State College Campus

Penn State Prof Suggests Conservative Student Org Partly Responsible For Capitol Riot

Capitol Riot

Penn State University

On Monday, Michael Knowles discussed his ordeal at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, where a group of Leftists disrupted his speech and one attempted to spray him with an unknown liquid. Not only has the faculty refused to apologize, but some of their staff have openly endorsed the actions of the students. A local newspaper even theorized that Knowles deserved it. Knowles breaks it all down in a special episode of &#8220;The Michael Knowles Show.&#8221;
There was this event last Thursday at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. Many of you watched it. I was invited to give a lecture there on the topic, &#8220;Men Are Not Women.&#8221; Pretty basic topic. If you took a time machine back to five years ago and told people that that would be a controversial topic in five years, they would laugh in your face. So, I go there, and I give this talk, I try to give this talk. From the very beginning, there was a group of about a dozen leftists screaming like banshees, screaming so loudly that the other people in the room could not hear it. Some of the people on video could hear because I was speaking directly into a microphone that was being broadcast.
People in the room couldn&#8217;t because these leftists screamed like hyenas consistently for about 20 minutes. Eventually, they get up and they go to leave, and they are screaming all these crazy things at me. And then from behind me, out of my periphery, some leftist thug wearing a face mask and bandana, comes in and squirts some unknown chemical at me which had a very strong smell and it had a weird color. What he didn&#8217;t realize is that the police were right by that door. They dropped him to the ground in a matter of seconds and they arrested him very quickly. He was fighting back. He did not count on there being any consequences to this. So, I went on and I made some jokes about it and tried to push on with the speech.
It was first then reported that it was paint that the guy tried to spray on me. That&#8217;s kind of what I thought it was. Then a lot of people in the room who were closer to where the super soaker full of this chemical was were reporting that it was bleach. So obviously, it seems like the authorities in the room thought that this could be a dangerous chemical, which is why they responded so quickly. We later found out it was a non-toxic household chemicals. Seems pretty clear that the kid, this attacker, was trying to give the impression that it was some sort of dangerous chemical, but he wanted to avoid multiple felonies on his record, so probably that was smart for him. Regardless, the point of this is pretty clear.
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First of all, it could&#8217;ve been anything that he was hurling onto a conservative speaker and what it really seems to be is a warning shot. Which is that if you don&#8217;t shut up, if you don&#8217;t kowtow to leftist orthodoxy, you will be intimidated, you&#8217;ll be shouted down, and ultimately, you&#8217;ll be physically attacked. Don&#8217;t forget they didn&#8217;t start out trying to physically attack me. They started out just trying to scream me down and hoping that I would leave and shut up. Only when I didn&#8217;t do that, did this guy bust in and try to hurl some liquid on me. That was the ultimate point. So we know that this kind of violence has happened at universities. I&#8217;m not the first conservative speaker to be attacked, Charles Murray has been attacked. I think Christina Hoff Summers was attacked. This has happened at other places.
The more shocking thing here was the response. The response of the university, the chancellor of the University of Missouri-Kansas City Mauli Agrawal and the response of the Kansas City Star, and the mainstream media more broadly. What the left is doing here is trying to equate violence with nonviolence; that&#8217;s the big takeaway. They&#8217;ve been doing it not just to me in this story over the past three days. They&#8217;ve done it to President Trump; they&#8217;ve done it to Dan Crenshaw. They&#8217;re trying to equate violence with nonviolence. The university&#8217;s reaction: the next morning a letter comes out from the chancellor&#8217;s office. I expect there to be an apology to an invited speaker who was harassed and then assaulted&#8230; No no no.
Here&#8217;s the letter from Chancellor Mauli Agrawal: &#8220;A student group brought a speaker to campus, a speaker who&#8217;s professed opinions do not align with our commitment to diversity and inclusion and our goal of providing a welcoming environment to all people particularly to our LGBT community.&#8221;
First of all, what&#8217;s my stated opinion? The topic of the speech is &#8220;men are not women&#8221; and the university doesn&#8217;t agree with that. Does the university think men are women? Also, the irony they said this doesn&#8217;t speak to our values of diversity &#8212; I&#8217;m the only one talking about diversity. I&#8217;m saying there&#8217;s a diversity of sexes. I&#8217;m saying there is diversity between men and women. You&#8217;re the one saying that the sexes are completely homogenous. There&#8217;s no such thing as women. There&#8217;s only one sex, and we&#8217;re all the same. There&#8217;s no difference between men and women.
More broadly this guy opens up his letter not by condemning violence on campus, not by condemning the heckler&#8217;s veto in these banshee behaving students who should be expelled from the university&#8230; No no no. He opens up the letter by baselessly smearing the invited speaker as some sort of bigot, and he said my opinions are not welcoming to the LGBT community. I&#8217;m some sort of anti-gay bigot. Now does he cite any of the opinions that are apparently so bigoted? No, of course not because he can&#8217;t. What could he say? But that&#8217;s how he begins.
So you can see where the letter is going to go from there. He says, &#8220;Upon learning of the speaker&#8217;s visit members of the UMKC community responded in the best way, by organizing and conducting a counter event across campus Thursday afternoon focused on positive messages about diversity and inclusion.&#8221;
First of all, that&#8217;s not the best way to respond. The best way would be to go and listen to the speaker and then at a different time hold another event where people who disagree with you will go and then you will discuss these differing ideas, and people can come to their own conclusions. But to try to just distract from the event and try to pull people away from that actually isn&#8217;t the best way to respond. He goes on: &#8220;Even during the speech some peaceful protesters stood and expressed disagreement with the speaker&#8217;s views. Then, unfortunately, some others crossed a line.&#8221;
No, what happened during the speeches from the very moment that I started to speak, these activists shrieked so loudly that nobody could hear the speech.
If a university chancellor believes that is one of the best ways to respond, then he is a disgrace to higher education. Mauli Agrawal is a disgrace to American higher education, to liberal education. He should resign. He should be pressured by the trustees and the alumni and the governor and the students to resign. That is an outrage. What he is saying in that letter, is that the best way to engage with ideas that we might not understand or that we might think that we disagree with or that we maybe never have heard before, is to scream at the top of our lungs like little children, like toddlers, until they are cowered and intimidated into leaving.
Mauli Agrawal, the chancellor of UMKC should resign or else the trustees, the alumni, and the governor are sending a message to every other college in the country, that it&#8217;s perfectly fine to shout down speakers and to shout down views that are not trendy or faddish at the time. So, this disgrace to higher education, Mauli Agrawal goes on, after defending the heckler&#8217;s veto after baselessly smearing an invited speaker as some sort of bigot he goes on. Imagine the message this university is sending out to say &#8212; hey speakers we&#8217;d like you to come to campus, we&#8217;d like you to fly across the country, take time out of your schedules to come here and give a speech. And by the way we&#8217;re going to defend harassment and the heckler&#8217;s veto. We&#8217;re not really going to condemn political violence at least not primarily. We&#8217;ll get to that eventually maybe. And by the way, we&#8217;re going to baselessly smear you as a bigot. But come on. That&#8217;s what the university is for.
He goes on, he says, &#8220;UMKC must maintain a safe environment in which all points of view even extreme ones are allowed to be heard.&#8221; 
I mentioned this one because in 2019 the opinion that men are not women is an extreme point of view. We hear a lot of sort of moral equivalence between the left and the right. Oh well you know the left they do their crazy things and the right they do their crazy things and come on&#8230; No no no. The chancellor of an American university, a state university, who is a left-winger is saying that the point of view that men are not women is extreme and then the right is saying men are not women. Those are not equally extreme crazy viewpoints &#8212; one of those is radical and the other is common sense. No equivalence whatsoever.
He says, &#8220;We continue to urge everyone in our UMKC community and the broader community to stay true to our values in the face of provocation and to respond to bias and intolerance with reason and courage to hardened attitudes with open minds and honest questions to false statements with calm fact-based challenges.&#8221;
Listen to what this disgrace does in this letter. He says that the students need to respond to provocation in this way as though I was begging to go visit UMKC. I was begging to fly across the country to give the lecture, please let me come, please. I&#8217;ll pay you to let me come. I was invited to the school, your school Mauli Agrawal, the school that you represent, invited me to come. You provoked me if anything.
Provocation? You invited me to speak on a specific topic, which I then did. And for that grave mistake that I apparently made taking Mauli Agrawal on face value, for that crazy mistake, I was harassed and physically assaulted.

WATCH: Knowles Calls For Ouster Of University Chancellor After ‘Disgraceful’ Response To Anti-Free Speech Attack

Conservatism

Education

LGBTQ

Michael Knowles

As The Daily Wire has previously <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/45612/baylor-amanda-prestigiacomo">reported</a>, our own <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/authors/matt-walsh">columnist</a>/<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/podcasts/show/matt-walsh-show">podcast host</a> Matt Walsh is facing protests in anticipation of a speech — sponsored by Young Americans for Freedom (YAF) — that he will deliver at Baylor University <a href="https://www.yaf.org/events/matt-walsh-at-baylor-university/">tomorrow evening</a>. According to The Daily Wire&#8217;s Amanda Prestigiacomo:
<blockquote>Left-wing students and faculty at Baylor University, an alleged Christian school, are trying to shut down a speech concerning life, gender, and marriage from a Christian perspective by The Daily Wire&#8217;s Matt Walsh set for Tuesday. &#8230;
A Change.org petition seeking to censor Walsh, titled &#8220;Stop Matt Walsh, Conservative Blogger, from Delivering Anti-LGBTQ Speech at Baylor,&#8221; has garnered 2,200-plus signatures as of Saturday morning.
&#8220;Baylor University’s conservative student group, Baylor Young Americans for Freedom, has invited conservative blogger Matt Walsh to deliver an Anti-LGBTQ+ speech on April 9,&#8221; the petition claims, adding, &#8220;This cannot be allowed to take place. Please remove this from campus events. For the benefit of all LGBTQ+ students, alumni, and future students, this harmful hate speech must be kept off of our beloved campus.”</blockquote>
Over 600 individuals of all stripes — alumni, students, faculty, and staff — affiliated with Baylor also signed a letter expressing serious concern with the appearance of Walsh, a conservative Catholic, at the purportedly Baptist university. Walsh responded on Twitter on Friday, referring to the letter as, &#8220;cowardly, overwrought, dishonest, ridiculous nonsense.&#8221;
<div class="embed tweet">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">Faculty and students are now claiming that my appearance threatens their “psychological, emotional, and physical wellbeing.”
This is cowardly, overwrought, dishonest, ridiculous nonsense. <a href="https://t.co/c2AZvmncfU">https://t.co/c2AZvmncfU</a>
— Matt Walsh (@MattWalshBlog) <a href="https://twitter.com/MattWalshBlog/status/1114246937098772480?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 5, 2019</a></blockquote>
</div>
Today, in a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/45700/walsh-baylor-matt-walsh">column</a> for The Daily Wire, Walsh elaborated on the cowardice of the protesters:
<blockquote>To be perfectly clear about this, I am simply coming to the campus to give a speech. I will stand at a podium, talk for a little while, answer questions, and leave. At no point will I engage in any activity that could possibly threaten anyone&#8217;s safety. I come armed only with ideas. You may disagree with the ideas, but they cannot hurt you. And, in fact, you cannot even really know that you disagree with the ideas until you have listened to them.
That&#8217;s the problem with the hostility to open dialogue on college campuses. It’s not just that students who react this way to opposing ideas will never learn what other people think; worse, they’ll never learn what they themselves think. We cannot develop a coherent and original perspective if we have only ever allowed ourselves to be exposed to one set of views. All that happens, when we insulate ourselves from different viewpoints, is that we become more and more unjustifiably convinced of our own rightness and less and less capable of explaining why.</blockquote>
Reached for a statement by The Daily Wire, Baylor&#8217;s YAF chapter provided the following update on the latest from campus:
<blockquote>Baylor tried to put a last-minute requirement on the event, saying our advisor who is in D.C. right now needs to be there from set-up time (1:30 PM) to leave time (10:00 P.M.?), or else the event couldn’t go on. This isn’t a rule, but luckily we found a professor who is willing to do it [anyway]. Baylor’s Assistant Director of Student Activities signed an anti-YAF, anti-Walsh petition, as have dozens of faculty and administrators. And as a response to Matt Walsh, Baylor will in all likelihood be chartering an LGBT group, which would strip [Baylor] of its religious affiliation.</blockquote>
Also reached for a statement, Walsh added, &#8220;While I really appreciate and am grateful for the university administration’s unwillingness to cave to the mob, I am distressed that so many students at a Christian school are so hostile not only to the free exchange of ideas, but to the free exchange of Christian ideas.&#8221;
Walsh&#8217;s speech is still scheduled to go on tomorrow evening.
UPDATE: On Tuesday, leftist activist Laura Seay began to promote a counter-programning event to Walsh&#8217;s talk, entitled &#8220;Dia Love Feast.&#8221;
<div class="embed tweet">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">Want to support love &amp; inclusion on Baylor&#8217;s campus? Show up tonight at Dia Love Feast, a great alternative to that other event happening on campus tonight. <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/BaylorDia?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#BaylorDia</a> <a href="https://t.co/mrraAcsDxn">https://t.co/mrraAcsDxn</a>
— Laura Seay (@texasinafrica) <a href="https://twitter.com/texasinafrica/status/1115659354672455680?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 9, 2019</a></blockquote>
</div>

The Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh Is Being Protested At A Christian University. Here Is The Latest.

Leftism

Protest

On Monday, Young America&#8217;s Foundation (YAF) <a href="https://www.yaf.org/news/hoods-and-burning-crosses-optional-newspaper-editor-and-journalism-ethics-instructor-attacks-yafers-for-activism/">reported</a> that their Mississippi State University (MSU) chapter was smeared by a part-time instructor for an activism event about border security.
Ryan Phillips, who teaches &#8220;Journalism Ethics&#8221; at MSU, quote tweeted a video of the event, saying &#8220;Hey the White Male Student Caucus holding a gathering. Hoods and burning crosses optional.&#8221; 
<div class="embed tweet">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
Hey the White Male Student Caucus holding a gathering. Hoods and burning crosses optional <a href="https://t.co/93d58A1dGD">https://t.co/93d58A1dGD</a>
&#8212; Ryan Phillips (@JournoRyan) <a href="https://twitter.com/JournoRyan/status/1108423053019631618?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 20, 2019</a></blockquote>
</div>
According to YAF, the purpose of the tabling event was to &#8220;drive discussion on border security and President Trump&#8217;s proposal for a border wall to stem the flow of illegal immigrants.&#8221;
One female member of the club responded to Phillips sarcastically, &#8220;Thank you for assuming that I&#8217;m a white male!&#8221; The female also added, &#8220;You&#8217;re welcome to come to the table next time and not base your opinion off of one video on twitter.&#8221;
<div class="embed tweet">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
Thank you for assuming that I&#8217;m a white male! You&#8217;re welcome to come to the table next time and not base your opinion off of one video on twitter.
&#8212; kaleigh (@Kaleighnicole13) <a href="https://twitter.com/Kaleighnicole13/status/1108499694219612160?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 20, 2019</a></blockquote>
</div>
In response, Phillips said, &#8220;Trust me, I based my opinion on a whole lot more than this video.&#8221; 
<div class="embed tweet">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
Trust me, I based my opinion on a whole lot more than this video.
&#8212; Ryan Phillips (@JournoRyan) <a href="https://twitter.com/JournoRyan/status/1108510316869156864?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 20, 2019</a></blockquote>
</div>
Jesse Watkins, the president of MSU&#8217;s YAF chapter, called Phillip&#8217;s judgment &#8220;ignorant,&#8221; adding that he did not speak &#8220;with a single representative of the group, in fact, not 1 single member said they were against LEGAL immigration, and you decided to slander us without any concern for truth.&#8221;
<div class="embed tweet">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
You made an ignorant judgement without speaking with a single representative for the group, in fact not 1 single member said they were against LEGAL immigration, and you decided to slander us without any concern for truth.
&#8212; Jesse Watkins (@WatkinsJesse97) <a href="https://twitter.com/WatkinsJesse97/status/1108535496580481025?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 21, 2019</a></blockquote>
</div>
Spencer Brown, the spokesman of YAF, called the episode &#8220;emblematic of a major problem within higher education &#8212; and to an extent within the larger culture today &#8212; where ideological opponents of conservatism turn to ad hominem attacks and poison the well of ideas in their attempts to silence conservatives.&#8221;
&#8220;Phillips owes MSU YAF an apology along with those who&#8217;ve been afflicted by the hatred of racist intolerance &#8212; drawing false comparisons cheapens the horror wrought by the KKK&#8217;s despicable worldview,&#8221; Spencer added. 
In a statement to The Daily Wire, Watkins said Phillips&#8217; tweet &#8220;came out of the blue.&#8221;
&#8220;We had been out for about four or five hours by the time the tweet surfaced,&#8221; Watkins said. &#8220;In fact, we had been next to the Latino Student Association for the first few hours with no incidents.&#8221;
The activism event was called &#8220;Build the Wall&#8221; and encouraged students to sign a banner and engage in dialogue about illegal immigration. 
&#8220;We understood that most people weren&#8217;t in favor of the wall, but we were hoping to have civil discourse with teachers and students,&#8221; Watkins added. &#8220;We had fantastic dialogue with probably 50 or so people who disagreed and one protestor who called us fascists, but Mr. Phillips&#8217; tweet really upset most of our members. Many of us jumped to the defense of our young chapter.&#8221;
Watkins said he wanted an apology from Phillips for his tweet and told his members to &#8220;show maturity and professionalism when dealing with negative tweets.&#8221;
&#8220;We have been disappointed to see that Mr. Phillips continues to act like we&#8217;re attacking him by simply defending our right to disagree with him,&#8221; Watkins said. &#8220;We have taken this issue up with the communications department here at State, and we are looking forward to handling this accordingly.&#8221;
Watkins said he is not trying to silence Phillips but wants him to be &#8220;cautious about labeling us without meeting with us.&#8221;
Phillips tried to set up a meeting with the chapter after the tweet, but Watkins said he cancelled it after talking with his chapter. 
&#8220;We figured that we didn&#8217;t have much to gain and [had] more to lose,&#8221; Watkins said.
In a statement to The Daily Wire, MSU&#8217;s Chief Communications Director Sidney Salter called Phillips&#8217; tweets &#8220;highly inappropriate, inflammatory, and patently unfair and intolerant.&#8221;
&#8220;Clearly, the students in the Young Americans for Freedom group were engaged in lawful activities that were within university guidelines. As a newspaper editor and as a part-time instructor in MSU&#8217;s Department of Communication, Mr. Phillips should be particularly sensitive to free speech and assembly rights &#8212; his own and those of others,&#8221; Salter said. &#8220;On any given day, students and faculty with widely divergent social and political views intersect on our campus and it is incumbent on all parties to maintain decorum and mutual respect in the conduct of those activities. Mississippi State University stands behind our free speech and assembly <a href="https://www.policies.msstate.edu/policypdfs/91304.pdf)">policies</a>.&#8221;

Journalism Ethics Instructor Compares Conservative Students To KKK

Censorship

Last October, Daily Wire Editor-in-Chief Ben Shapiro delivered a speech at the University of Southern California, despite attempts by the student government to suppress the event. Now, the student government may pass legislation that would prevent conservatives from being invited to the campus in the future.
Student government Senator Meagan Lane and Senate Aide Adenike Makinde justified the <a href="https://www.yaf.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/UPDATE-Special-Guests-Bylaw-Amendment.pdf">bylaw amendment</a> by claiming that &#8220;Ben Shapiro&#8217;s campus presence incited undue violence on the day of his presentation.&#8221;
The proposed amendment points out that there is no process for &#8220;review or scrutiny&#8221; of speakers invited by student organizations. 
&#8220;There is no precedent for administrative intervention for guests who have been approved for campus attendance, but pose a threat to individual students or recognized groups,&#8221; Lane and Makinde stated. &#8220;Ensuring clarity of approval procedures will allay fears that guests whose presence pose a detriment to a safe and cohesive campus climate may present their views without opposition.&#8221;
The amendment proposes speakers be subject to a Special Guest Approval if the event is ticketed, expected to have an audience over 100 people, if students&#8217; safety is at risk, or if substantial security is required.
Three reasons are given for students petitioning speakers, including &#8220;persons who have accepted endorsements from hate organizations,&#8221; adding &#8220;groups designated by SPLC, for example.&#8221; The Southern Poverty Law Center, a left-leaning, self-described &#8220;hate group&#8221; watchdog that has repeatedly been criticized for unfairly labeling mainstream conservatives as extremists, recently <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/32160/47-nonprofits-warn-editors-ceos-youre-complicit-james-barrett">settled</a> a $3.375 million defamation settlement with Maajid Nawaz and his Quilliam Foundation for falsely labeling the foundation as &#8220;anti-Muslim extremists.&#8221;
The other two grounds for petitioning speakers are those who are &#8220;publicly supported members of hate organizations,&#8221; or those &#8220;on record as having publicly incited, supported, or explicitly encouraged violence or harassment.&#8221;
In a <a href="https://www.yaf.org/news/after-shapiro-usc-more-regulations/">statement</a>, Young Americans for Freedom, the organization that hosted Shapiro, said that the proposed amendment was introduced to give the student government the power &#8220;to restrict and/or revoke funding from student organizations who are bringing speakers that fail to meet the new subjective standards of certain USG officials and students who voice opposition.&#8221;
&#8220;This comes in response to the approval of security funding USC YAF had requested for our Ben Shapiro lecture after meeting the objective USG funding criteria,&#8221; YAF said.
YAF also said that they view the proposed legislation that would amend the student government bylaws as &#8220;a direct contradiction to the values of free speech as guaranteed under the First Amendment of the U.S Constitution and as a disservice to the USC community.&#8221;
&#8220;Such legislation denies to all students the access to intellectual diversity that is paramount to a well-rounded higher education,&#8221; the organization said.
Shapiro spoke at USC on October 4 to a sold-out room of more than 1,200 students, with hundreds more turned away, reports YAF. 
Prior to the event, the Undergraduate Student Government considered cutting funding for the speech because YAF cancelled tickets for students they believed would disrupt the event, The Daily Wire <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/36663/usc-student-government-threatens-cut-funding-daily-wire">reported</a>.
USG Treasurer Hunter Quarteri stated, &#8220;USG funding has a very strict policy guideline in which any event that is put on by a registered student organization needs to be free of charge and open to all USC students to attend.&#8221;
USC YAF chairman Maxwell Brandon countered this point by claiming there was a &#8220;fair reason to believe that the specific individuals were planning on &#8230; getting tickets to disrupt the event or getting tickets to obstruct people from going to the event. We do have some record of very specific people and those people were removed.&#8221;
Despite the attempts to cut funding, the event went on as planned and the students held a protest outside the venue.

YAF: USC Student Government Trying To Prevent Conservative Speakers After Ben Shapiro Event

Ben Shapiro

University of Southern California

One self-described Ben Shapiro hater had at least one brief shining moment: he emailed the Young Americans for Freedom chapter at the University of Southern California, where Shapiro is scheduled to speak on October 4, and <a href="https://www.yaf.org/news/shapiro-hater-at-usc-blows-whistle-on-plans-for-sizeable-disruption-of-lecture/">leaked his leftist friends&#8217; plans</a> to wreck the event.
The student wrote:
<blockquote>
As much as I hate Ben Shapiro and what he stands for, and I mean that guy drives me crazy, I am firmly a believer in letting people speak, so I want to let you know that at the Oct 4th event there will be a sizable number of student activists seeking to disrupt the event by coordinating texts, phone calls, and alarms to go off during the event. Activists include members of both USG [USC&#8217;s student government] and org leadership who are distributing the signup link along with the code to get a free seat, so the number of disrupters may be fairly large. I believe that if this is allowed to happen it will make everyone at our university look bad, so I advise you to take reasonable steps to prevent an embarrassment.
</blockquote>
YAF spokesman Spencer Brown commended the student for standing up for free speech, but added that the student should consider working with others to stop the incipient disruption:
<blockquote>
This John Doe is right: It&#8217;s incredibly embarrassing when these prestigious institutions are reduced to ideological echo chambers where students run the show and administrators are powerless against the angry horde of intolerant leftist tyrants in training. But rather than placing the onus on the conservative students who are doing the work their own school won&#8217;t&#8212;bringing a leading conservative and ideological diversity to their campus&#8212;why doesn&#8217;t this leftist hold his own teammates accountable and prevent an embarrassment of their own.
</blockquote>
Brown continued, &#8220;If the last school years&#8217; worth of campus lectures and the tired tactics of leftists to silence conservative students is any guide, USC leftists continuing their threats to subject Ben Shapiro and the USC Young Americans for Freedom chapter to a heckler&#8217;s veto will only make a mockery of themselves by showing their true, intolerant colors, while giving Ben Shapiro a larger platform and conservative students more power than ever.&#8221;
Shapiro&#8217;s events have been plagued by protests numerous times, including the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/3716/fascists-csula-create-near-riot-pull-fire-alarm-amanda-prestigiacomo">near-riot</a> at Cal State Los Angeles in February 2016; the protesters who <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/10869/shapiro-eviscerates-raucous-protesters-university-hank-berrien">blocked the stage</a> at the University of Wisconsin in November 2016, finally giving the finger to him as they left, which prompted Shapiro to respond with a double-bird; the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/21098/live-berkeley-all-updates-shapiro-hits-campus-daily-wire">infamous</a> University of California, Berkeley event in September 2017, when the university spent <a href="http://www.dailycal.org/2017/09/17/uc-berkeley-security-costs-ben-shapiros-visit-estimated-600k/">$600,000 on police protection</a>, and the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/22547/watch-abcs-nightline-profiles-ben-shapiro-daily-wire">protests</a> at the University of Utah the same month.

‘Shapiro-Hater’ At USC Leaks Leftists’ Plans To Wreck Speaking Event

UPDATE:
The original article has been corrected to reflect that Ripon College did not overtly reject YAF&#8217;s application, but that they did not grant an application; Ripon claims that no application is necessary in the first place.
Ripon College told The Daily Wire that the students are not prohibited from hanging the posters and that the students were not reported, but that &#8220;members of the campus community sent notes to the bias group about the posters.&#8221; Ripon College also says they are &#8220;well aware&#8221; that the YAF chapter will hang their posters and that &#8220;there is no policy that requires pre-approval to hang posters,&#8221; adding &#8220;The YAF students are also Ripon College Students and as such are free to submit complaints to the bias group.&#8221;
YAF posted <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.yaf.org/news/ripon-colleges-ban-by-any-other-name/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1536186508603000&amp;usg=AFQjCNFAUdWvJxa-5uzq075TD5hYUc4kHA" href="https://www.yaf.org/news/ripon-colleges-ban-by-any-other-name/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">a new article titled</a>, &#8220;Ripon College&#8217;s Ban By Any Other Name,&#8221; alleging that &#8220;Ripon College claims that because they never used the word &#8216;ban&#8217; in reference to the posters memorializing innocent victims of radical Islamist terrorism, they don&#8217;t deserve the criticism that&#8217;s been leveled at them.&#8221; YAF added, &#8220;It seems self-evident but in our view, as well as the view of the larger press, a refusal to grant approval is the equivalent of a ban.&#8221;
ORIGINAL:
Administrators at Ripon College have not granted approval for a Young Americans for Freedom (YAF) poster publicizing their 9/11 memorial because &#8220;students from a Muslim background would feel singled out and/or harassed,&#8221; <a href="https://www.yaf.org/news/ripon-college-bias-protocol-board-rules-against-yafs-9-11-never-forget-posters/">according to YAF.</a>
The flyers are provided by YAF for their &#8220;9/11: Never Forget Project&#8221; and feature pictures from various terrorist attacks including 9/11, the 2017 Pulse nightclub shooting, and the 1979 Iranian hostage crisis, among others. 
Administrators were critical of the poster, claiming that some of the events &#8220;don&#8217;t have anything to do with 9/11,&#8221; citing ISIS (<a href="https://www.history.com/topics/isis">which was previously named Al Qaeda in Iraq until 2013)</a> and the Iranian hostage crisis, of which one administrator claimed, &#8220;I&#8217;m not sure I think the Iran hostage issue was Islamic terrorism.&#8221;
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Poster for YAF&#8217;s 9/11: Never Forget Project 
The administration reportedly told the chapter that objections were brought to the administration and the bias incident team because the posters focus &#8220;relentlessly on one religious organization, one religious group, one religious identity,&#8221; and that &#8220;associating that one religious identity with terrorist attacks which go back far before 9/11 and after 9/11&#8212; creates for some students here an environment which they feel like they are not able to learn.&#8221; 
Members of the Bias Protocol Board also said that the poster does not add &#8220;to the conversation about 9/11, or about the politics of terrorism, or about national security or responses to it that couldn&#8217;t be done easily and more constructively without it.&#8221;
Administrators also raised concerns about the poster only displaying terrorism committed by Islamic terrorist organization. &#8220;It seems like the only terrorist activities brought up in this poster are those done by extremist Islamic groups, and so if I&#8217;m Muslim on this campus, like, ok, it sends the message that all terrorism happens by Muslims,&#8221; administrators reportedly said.
One administrator also said &#8220;the intent is admirable to talk about why we are killing each other,&#8221; according to YAF, but questioned why the club was focusing on 9/11 instead of school shootings.&#8220;That&#8217;s very admirable, and I support that, but what about school shootings?&#8221; the administrator asked. &#8220;We&#8217;ve had almost a school shooting a day for the last ten days, and we&#8217;re continuing to up the body count.&#8221; 
The chapter used the same posters for their memorial last year, causing a bias report to be filed and resulting in a review and a meeting ahead of the planned memorial for this semester, according to YAF.
&#8220;Just as remembrances of horrific events carried out in the name of Nazism or Communism include honoring other victims of those ideological treacheries, so does the remembrance of the attacks carried out by radical Islamists on September 11, 2001,&#8221; YAF spokesman Spencer Brown said in an article.
Spencer also points out that while Ripon is a private institution, it is not &#8220;immune from criticism of its decisions, especially when they attempt to censor key moments in our nation&#8217;s history that would be forgotten if not for bold Young Americans for Freedom activists such as those in Ripon YAF.&#8221;

Ripon Won’t Grant Approval For Poster For 9/11 Memorial [UPDATED]

Terrorism

After the shabby treatment the University of Minnesota doled out to Daily Wire Editor-in-Chief Ben Shapiro in February, relegating him to <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/26779/push-comes-shove-university-minnesota-trying-force-daily-wire">speaking off-campus</a> rather than on the main campus despite the fact that they had easily found space on campus for arch-leftist Senator Elizabeth Warren and home state leftist Senator Al Franken, a major donor to the university has <a href="https://www.yaf.org/news/university-of-minnesota-alumnus-pulls-financial-support-over-schools-discrimination-against-ben-shapiro/">pulled their funding and shifted to partnering</a> with Young Americans for Freedom &#8212; the chapter affiliate of Young America&#8217;s Foundation, which had sponsored Shapiro&#8217;s speech.
In a <a href="https://www.yaf.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/UMN-Letter.pdf">letter</a> to University of Minnesota President Eric Kaler, the donor, who came from the class of 1962, wrote:
<blockquote>
I believe the treatment of Ben Shapiro was clearly a case of discrimination. It was not discrimination by race or gender. It was more damaging than that. You have discriminated against the free dissemination of ideas.
The question then becomes why you discriminate against conservative thought. My simple theory is that the administration and faculty of our major bodies of higher education are fearful. They are fearful that once people like Ben Shapiro speak about their conservative ideas, the students will begin to understand a simple fact. It is the fact that they have been exposed to only one way of thinking and thus will be furious over having spent so much time and money only to find out that they have been essentially brainwashed.
Because of this, I have decided to give my annual contribution for scholarship at the U of M to the Young Americans for Freedom.
</blockquote>
The donor concluded the letter, &#8220;An excellent example of how much damage you have done; I am not signing my name for fear of political retaliation.&#8221;
Young America&#8217;s Foundation spokesman Spencer Brown stated,
<blockquote>
We applaud this patriotic American&#8217;s decision to withhold support from an institution that undermines and discriminates against conservatives. Such a decision is an important first step in giving students a full, ideologically diverse education that includes conservative ideas. It&#8217;s a tragedy that this once-proud alumnus of the University of Minnesota has been abandoned by his alma mater. With the meaningful support of individuals such as the author of this letter, Young America&#8217;s Foundation is able to continue the vital work of holding schools accountable, including through YAF&#8217;s First Amendment lawsuit against the University of California, Berkeley.
</blockquote>

Major Donor Pulls Funding From University Of Minnesota For Discriminating Against Ben Shapiro

Minnesota

On Thursday, four days before Daily Wire Editor-in-Chief Ben Shapiro&#8217;s scheduled speech at the University of Florida, leftists roamed the campus quad attempting to remove posters and chalk messages advertising the event. Activists from the university&#8217;s Young Americans for Freedom were alerted; one, Eduardo Neret, <a href="http://www.yaf.org/news/lol-uf-yafers-troll-leftist-vandals-caught-destroying-shapiro-fliers/">confronted a vandal</a> just as he tore down a poster.
That prompted Neret to follow the vandal, questioning him while the vandal tried to hide his face. Neret queried:
<blockquote>
Hey, man, why did you rip that Ben Shapiro poster down? Why&#8217;d you rip that poster down? Wait, wait; you want to rip down a poster and then you&#8217;re too afraid to say why you ripped it down? C&#8217;mon, man. Why&#8217;d you rip it down? Why&#8217;d you rip down the Ben Shapiro poster? You don&#8217;t believe in free speech? You know, that&#8217;s against property rights. When you post something like that at the University it actually belongs to the University of Florida. C&#8217;mon, show your face. Don&#8217;t be a coward. C&#8217;mon, man. You ripped down the poster and then you don&#8217;t want to show your face?
</blockquote>
The vandals tried to erase the chalk messages by dumping water on them; when that failed, they wrote their own messages, including &#8220;BLACK LIVES MATTER,&#8221; &#8220;TRANS LIVES MATTER,&#8221; as well as calling Shapiro &#8220;the Racist&#8221; and a &#8220;HATE-MONGER.&#8221;
<div class="image"><img decoding="async" alt src="https://dw-wp-dev.imgix.net/2019/09/water_0.jpg" /></div>
<div class="image"><img decoding="async" alt src="https://dw-wp-dev.imgix.net/2019/09/chalk_messages.jpg" /></div>
One especially literate leftist left this message: &#8220;or you could do LITERALLY anything else and use your timely productivly [sic].&#8221;
In addition, YAF activists discovered that some leftists groups, such as Students for Democratic Socialism, Indivisible Gainesville, and College Democrats, tried to hoard tickets so conservatives could not attend.
Video of confrontation below:
<div class="embed video fluid-video"><iframe loading="lazy" allowfullscreen frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/lDjDx90AIMA" width="560"></iframe></div>

water_0

WATCH: Vandal Tearing Down Shapiro Poster Confronted, Won’t Show His Face

California State University &#8211; Los Angeles has revised its policies and practices that were intended to block Daily Wire Editor-in-Chief Ben Shapiro&#8217;s speech last year as a result of a lawsuit filed by Young Americans for Freedom, Shapiro and others.
The Alliance Defending Freedom represented the plaintiffs. Senior Counsel Casey Mattox, director of the ADF Center for Academic Freedom, stated,
<blockquote>
Today&#8217;s college students will be tomorrow&#8217;s legislators, judges, commissioners, and voters. That&#8217;s why it&#8217;s so important that public universities model the First Amendment values they are supposed to be teaching to students. It should disturb everyone when any university communicates to a generation that the Constitution doesn&#8217;t matter. This agreement will pave the way to more freedom for students and speakers at Cal State L.A.
</blockquote>
As <a href="http://www.adfmedia.org/News/PRDetail/10117">ADF explained</a>:
<blockquote>
In addition to dropping unconstitutional security charges that are based on the viewpoint being expressed at an event, the university has agreed that it will not cancel or refuse to schedule a speaker based on their viewpoint and will enforce the university&#8217;s Free Expression Policy in a viewpoint-neutral manner. That policy prohibits actions that would block or disrupt access to any event on campus. Because the university opposed Shapiro&#8217;s viewpoint, it had refused to enforce the policy when school officials allowed protesters to block access to the event.
</blockquote>
Because the university agreed to make the changes, the plaintiffs <a href="http://www.adfmedia.org/files/YAF-CovinoDismissal.pdf">dismissed</a> their lawsuit.
The university attempted to shut down Shapiro&#8217;s speech, scheduled by Young Americans for Freedom for February 25, 2016, and co-sponsored by the Young America&#8217;s Foundation. First University officials charged the group $621.50 for security and then canceled the speech. Shapiro went anyway, despite the fact that some professors helped incite a mob to block entry to the venue where Shapiro was speaking. The <a href="http://www.dailywire.com/news/3704/exclusive-csula-police-look-away-protesters-joshua-yasmeh">near-riot</a> that followed saw students listening to the speech and Shapiro himself trapped inside the venue while protesters blocked the exits and triggered the fire alarm.
ADF Senior Counsel Tyson Langhofer, who <a href="http://www.adfmedia.org/News/PRDetail/10119">argued before a federal court</a> on behalf of YAF, stated, &#8220;Instead of playing favorites toward some while shutting out others, universities should provide a level playing field so that all students can engage freely in the marketplace of ideas. Cal State L.A.&#8217;s acknowledgment that the university can&#8217;t charge fees for speech it labels &#8216;controversial&#8217; is a recognition that the prior policy violated the students&#8217; freedom of speech. The university&#8217;s changes should enable students to organize future events in a safe and civil environment.&#8221;
Shapiro added, &#8220;Last year&#8217;s near-riot at Cal State L.A. was a travesty with regard to free speech. I&#8217;m excited that we were able to come to an agreement with them to protect free speech in the future, and I look forward to coming to the campus soon to speak again. Hopefully this time, we can have an honest, open, and productive discussion rather than violence and chaos from those who disagree.&#8221;
<blockquote>
Hopefully this time, we can have an honest, open, and productive discussion rather than violence and chaos from those who disagree.&#8221;
Ben Shapiro
</blockquote>
Young America&#8217;s Foundation President Ron Robinson echoed, &#8220;We hope the university&#8217;s affirmation of its free speech policies will help ensure that they will truly apply to all individuals and organizations at Cal State L.A. and not just leftist professors and organizations.&#8221;
YAF and Shapiro are attempting to schedule another speech at the university sometime in 2017.

After Lawsuit From Shapiro And YAF, CSULA Now Will Let Conservatives Speak On Campus

Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF)

California State University

Los Angeles (CSULA)

On Sunday, The <a href="http://nypost.com/2017/01/15/the-campus-left-needs-to-stop-whining/">New York Post</a> pointed out in an op-ed that University of Wisconsin-Madison snowflakes, triggered by Daily Wire Editor-in-Chief Ben Shapiro&#8217;s <a href="http://www.dailywire.com/news/10869/shapiro-eviscerates-raucous-protesters-university-hank-berrien">speech</a> there in mid-November, in which protesters formed a wall in front of Shapiro, have petitioned the university to deem the campus Young Americans for Freedom chapter, which sponsored Shapiro&#8217;s speech, a hate group.
The leftist group, the Student Coalition for Progress, also petitioned to have the members of the Young Americans for Freedom chapter subjected to &#8220;intensive diversity training.&#8221;
The petition<a href="https://www.change.org/p/uw-madison-administration-denounce-young-americans-for-freedom-and-the-alt-right"> read</a>:
<blockquote>
For the last few years, ultra-conservative student organization Young Americans for Freedom has existed on campus and has not been a threat to the greater campus community. They brought in speakers that espoused unsavory viewpoints and promoted conservatism, but were nonconfrontational.
That changed during the Fall 2016 semester. 
When current chairwoman Kara Bell stepped in to replace the outgoing leader of the chapter, a decision was made to bring in controversial commentator Ben Shapiro. Shapiro has used his following and nationally syndicated media presence to deny the realities of systematic and institutional violences against Black and Brown people, sexual assault survivors, Muslims, LGBTQIA+ people, people with low income, people with differing abilities, undocumented immigrants, and anyone that is systematically targeted along identity lines.
</blockquote>
The Post condemned the action in an op-ed, noting, &#8220;Triggering the whiners was a visit from conservative columnist Ben Shapiro, who spoke about how &#8220;&#8217;safe spaces&#8217; limit free speech &#8212; which, the petition claimed, had denied &#8216;systematic and institutional violences&#8217; against marginalized communities.&#8221;
The Post opined, &#8220;Happily, the petition bombed, scrounging barely more than a couple hundred signatures. But the effort shows yet again that &#8216;shut up&#8217; remains the central argument of the campus left. Sadly, the kids who need re-education &#8212; or, rather, a basic education in the fundamentals of civilized discourse &#8212; are the ones in the Student Coalition for Progress.&#8221;
<blockquote>
&#8220;Triggering the whiners was a visit from conservative columnist Ben Shapiro, who spoke about how &#8220;&#8217;safe spaces&#8217; limit free speech &#8212; which, the petition claimed, had denied &#8216;systematic and institutional violences&#8217; against marginalized communities.&#8221;
New York Post
</blockquote>
Leftists at the University had created a private Facebook page before Shapiro&#8217;s speech, titled &#8220;F(***) White Supremacy: Interrupting Ben Shapiro.&#8221; The irony was not lost on Shapiro at the time, as he noted he had been the target of white supremacists.

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