While the enemy has set his sights on several cultural issues of the day in America, there is one where it seems he has shown a particular interest in to stir up hatred and dissension these days—the right of free speech in this country.
Recently he has ramped up his evil work on the college campuses of America—and some of the incidents have turned violent.
Earlier this week at the University of California-Davis, the school’s chapter of Turning Point USA hosted an event featuring keynote speaker Charlie Kirk, who attempted to share his thoughts on “American values” before a group of students intervened and vandalized the building where the event was being held and injured a police officer.
Kirk himself was assaulted by eggs, according to his friend, Pastor Jack Hibbs of Calvary Chapel Chino Hills.
UC-Davis officials accused the group Antifa for the attack.
At Stanford University in California, the university’s Federal Society chapter had invited 5th U.S. Circuit Court Judge Kyle Duncan, an appointee of former President Donald Trump, to give a lecture at Stanford’s law school. During the lecture, Duncan was shouted down by “almost a hundred students” who prevented him from giving his address despite Stanford’s documented free speech policies published by the university’s Office of Community Standards.
At the University of Pittsburgh, a number of community members have become “understandably concerned” about three upcoming events on campus, according to an Instagram post. The post says:
“Two registered independent student organizations are sponsoring the events, which feature controversial speakers whose ‘expressed views on transgender rights and identity raise significant concerns about equity and for the belongingness of all our community members.’ One of the events features a debate between Michael Knowles and Deirdre McCloskey, who is a distinguished economist and a transgender woman.”
Each of these incidents are fraught with peril, and as in the case of the event at UC-Davis, have the potential to turn violent.
Turning Point USA is a nationwide non-profit organization that advocates for conservatism on higher education campuses, with 250,000 student members nationwide.
Hibbs called the attack on Kirk “tragic.”
“It is a constitutional right and freedom (free speech) that has gone on for hundreds of years where expression, debate and argumentation can be expressed by design on a university campus,” Hibbs said on a Facebook post. “Tragically, many people don’t know that anymore because they have attended universities like that.
“It’s tragic that a university, which used to be a bastion of debate and dialogue and of tolerance where a person would get up and express their view and their another person would give an opposing view … well, that’s gone. And it’s because America doesn’t know what it believes today. America doesn’t know where it has come from. Today in the U.S., students are completely ignorant of their origins. They have no concept of the value of free speech and how it came about, why it came about, and who the authors of the First Amendment to the Constitution were.
“Having said that, Charlie attempted to speak at UC-Davis, and it was his Constitutional right to do so. He was shut down, he was attacked, the building was broken up and glass doors were busted. What is the reasoning behind this? To remove free speech and shut the mouths of Christians or conservatives.”
Two people were arrested at UC-Davis for the attack, but the university would not identify them, only that one of them was not affiliated with UC-Davis.
At Stanford, the protesters were angry with Duncan over a 2020 opinion in which he refused to use a transgender’s offender’s preferred pronouns, several media outlets reported.
During an interview with The Washington Free Beacon about the incident, Duncan said, “If enough of these kids get into the legal profession, the rule of law will descend into barbarism.”
At Pitt, an unidentified official from the Office of the Provost said this on Instagram about the upcoming events:
“We acknowledge that legally protected speech and expression can at times offend, marginalize and cause distress to some members of our community. A recent speech by Michael Knowles disrespected transgender individuals by suggesting that their identities are false. Such rhetoric is repugnant.
“I want to emphatically state that hate-filled rhetoric is not what our community stands for. I stand for—and with—all Pitt community members, including our trans, non-binary, and gender non-conforming community members. I affirm not only their right to exist and thrive, but also value their vibrant contributions to our academic community.”
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Shawn A. Akers is the online editor at Charisma Media.
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