BUZZ
Petition demands school ‘commit to not platforming transphobic and anti-LGBTQ+ hate speech on campus’
The chief legal counsel for the Alliance Defending Freedom spoke at New York University Thursday afternoon regarding banning men from women’s sports — but not without leftist students expressing their disapproval via petition and protest.
According to Washington Square News, Jim Campbell’s Federalist Society-sponsored discussion “The 14th Amendment Case for Keeping Sports ‘On the Basis of Sex’” was attended by about 30 NYU law students and centered on the recent U.S. Supreme Court case West Virginia v. B.P.J. which allows states to ban males from participating on female athletic teams.
A student petition, titled “Call on NYU Law to Stop Platforming Anti-LGBTQ+ Hate,” claims the ADF is a “Christian nationalist hate group” and that its stance on keeping men from competing against women is “overt anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination.”
The petition invokes NYU’s Non-Discrimination and Anti-Harassment policy which prohibits “unwelcome contact” “based on…gender and/or gender identity [or] religion” that, to a “reasonable” person, “create[s] an intimidating, hostile, or offensive academic or residential environment…”
Allowing Campbell to speak amounts to “a tacit endorsement of discrimination and violence against LGBTQ+ people and students,” the petition reads.
The petition also had demanded that NYU Law cancel Campbell’s talk, to “commit to not platforming transphobic and anti-LGBTQ+ hate speech on campus,” and “ensur[e] the safety of transgender and LGBTQ+ students.”
Various NYU students expressed displeasure with the law school, the spokesperson of which noted the school “regularly schedule speakers who represent a broad range of viewpoints on matters of law and policy.”
Third-year law student Yuri Ceriale told WSN the law school “want[s] to welcome any opinion on campus as valid,” but that the “‘valid opinion’ that they have is that queer people are not real — it should be fixed and should not exist.”
Gwen Nighswander of the NYU LGBTQ+ law group OUTLaw called Campbell’s views “bigoted and retrograde,” and said “To welcome a leader of an ongoing hate campaign onto campus while hiding behind the pretext of encouraging legal debate is intellectually dishonest and cowardly.”
Nighswander added “As a trans person, mostly what I feel is contempt for the event itself and the speaker, disappointment in the people who chose to host it and regret that there are people on campus who disagree with the fact that I should be allowed free and full access to society.”
The WSN reports OUTLaw hosted the counter-event “Trans People Belong in Sports (And All Areas of Public Life)” which invited the ACLU lawyer who lost the SCOTUS West Virginia v. B.P.J. case.
In addition, a septet of NYU Students for a Democratic Society members protested outside the Campbell discussion chanting “transphobes, get out of here,” and “out of the closet, into the streets.”
In its latest free speech policy rankings, FIRE, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, places NYU at the very bottom out of 261 schools, noting its students “are more accepting of disruptive conduct against speakers.”
FIRE Director of Research Ryne Weiss said NYU should “address student acceptance of disruptive conduct” and “educate students on the difference between protected protest and event disruption.”
MORE: NYU scholar argues philosophical case against men competing in women sports
