This article first appeared in New English Review.
Last week, I attended a speaking event by Robert Spencer at the University of California at Irvine (UCI), which was hosted by Young Americans for Freedom (YAF), a conservative student organization with a chapter at UCI. After attending the event, I have managed to obtain disturbing information concerning the difficulty that YAF encountered in arranging it.
Initially, the YAF's poster announcing the event read, "Robert Spencer at UCI: The dangerous myth of Islamophobia." UCI administration reportedly had YAF change the wording since it implied that UCI was hosting the event due to the "UCI" reference, even though the original announcement included "Young Americans for Freedom at UCI". The poster was thus changed to read "YAF at UCI presents: Robert Spencer on the dangerous myth of Islamophobia." The university also reportedly threatened to hit YAF with a "fronting fine" if the video of the event were put on Young America's Foundation's (their parent organization) YouTube channel by YAF. As one who has fought numerous battles at UCI over the right to videotape public events in public venues, it seems to me that YAF can do whatever it wants with the video. After all, by its own words, UCI had nothing to do with the event.
In addition, during the week leading up to the event, YAF put up about 500 posters around campus, which were repeatedly torn down. YAF recorded several students doing it in their presence. One such person may have been a professor, though this is not confirmed. There were also efforts around the campus discouraging students from attending the event. As it was, there were only about 20-25 people present.
If the above is the case, it is pretty much par for the course in my view. Fortunately, there were no serious disruptions, save for a rude interruption by one young man. I am sure Spencer is used to far worse. But if UCI is truly a place where differing and even controversial opinions can be heard, which is what I hear so many university administrators prattling about, then this is a strange way of showing it.
The fact is that many universities put up bureaucratic obstacles when conservative or pro-Israel student groups want to bring in a speaker like Spencer, who, contrary to leftist dogma, is not a radical, but an expert, a scholar actually, on the Koran and Islamic teaching. He does not preach hatred towards Muslims but rather provides reasoned arguments as to how strict Islamic teaching and Sharia law are antithetical to our values of democracy and equality and are directly connected to the daily acts of violence that occur around the world. Indeed, much like the late Charlie Kirk, he invites debate and welcomes disagreements from the audience. Yet, he is unfairly labeled a hate monger by those who will not listen to him and cannot debate him.
UCI was one of dozens upon dozens of US universities that were subjected to pro-Palestinian encampments in 2024 following the monstrous Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, in UCI's case, an encampment that had to finally be ended by police after the university completely failed to deal with it. And yet, UCI has apparently not learned its lesson. Disruption in the guise of free speech was allowed to go on for over 2 weeks at UCI. The solution is not to allow YAF's posters to be torn down and to put up roadblocks to efforts to hold a peaceful speaking event. The solution is not to send a university official to sit in the audience with a laptop, taking notes on what a conservative speaker has to say.
Over the past two decades, I have watched dozens of fire-breathing radicals come to speak at UCI, hosted by the Muslim Student Union and Students for Justice in Palestine. People like Amir Abdel Malik Ali, Abdul Alim Musa, Mohamed al-Asi, Hatem Bazian, Hussam Ayloush, Zahra Billoo, and too many others to list here have come to UCI and spouted pure poison, often making anti-Semitic comments in their speeches. They were not disrupted, and if UCI put up bureaucratic obstacles to student groups hosting those speakers, I have never heard any complaints brought forth by these groups.
It is the same old double standard, and once again demonstrates how our institutions of higher learning have no clue as to how to be a place where respectful and reasoned dialogue can take place, which is precisely what universities are supposed to be in the first place.
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