The College Fix

Don’t fall sway to campus thugs

St. Olaf College, the private Minnesota school that last year was buffeted by a viral hate crime hoax, has refused to allow conservative speaker Ben Shapiro to come to campus.  The school has done so because Shapiro wished to make an appearance on the anniversary of last year’s hoax-fueled protests. “Our campus is still healing from that experience,” the college president says. “One year after the unrest, I would like this to be a time where our community is focused on building unity. For these reasons, having Mr. Shapiro come during the last week of April is counterproductive to that goal, and inappropriate.”

Do tell. Actually, to the university’s credit, this is a rather clever trick, a sort of shell-game of political cowardice. In a sane world—or on a sane campus, anyway—an appearance by Ben Shapiro would not, in any meaningful way, be “counterproductive” to the goal of “building unity;” Shapiro would simply come, and give his speech, and answer some questions, and then leave. That’s it. But that is not how things tend to go these days: In all likelihood an appearance at St. Olaf by Shapiro, or any other conservative speaker, would set off a round of screeching protests, accusations of “fascism” and “white supremacy” and “Nazism” (in a fit of cosmic irony, Shapiro, an orthodox Jew, has many times been accused of being a Nazi). Violent demonstrations would likely result; someone would set a car on fire, and somebody else would probably defecate on a police car, and you can be virtually certain that the local Starbucks would be vandalized, for some reason. Such is the nature of so much young progressive political action these days.

St. Olaf is thus right, in one sense, to recognize that Shapiro’s appearance would, in one way, be controversial. But that is not the fault of campus conservatives; it is the fault of the screaming activists who elect to burn things down when someone says something they don’t like. A responsible and integrous campus administration would say to the campus community: “Yes, a conservative speaker is coming to campus. No, you aren’t allowed to throw bricks just because you don’t like what he says. Grow up. Anybody committing any crime on this campus in response to this speech, or for any other reason, will be arrested and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”

Any response other than this would be an abdication of duty—as a college official and as a steward of what should be an open and vibrant community of debate and discourse. Ignore the crazy protesters; let the conservatives speak.

MORE: Campus free speech problems and hysterical progressive politics

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