"Harmful" Speech at USC: Who Decides?

Tommy Trojan
"I need 'protection' from harmful speech."'



Here is yet another example of conservative voices being silenced at a university. A conservative student who serves on the student government at the University of Southern California, is under attack for his political views. As a result, some are trying to force Jacob Ellenhorn off of student government. And predictably enough, we have a professor saying that "harmful" speech has no place on the USC campus-whatever his definition of harmful speech is.

http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2016/03/09/student-senator-faces-impeachment-for-conservative-beliefs.html?intcmp=hphz03

“Harmful speech has no place in the Trojan community,” Smith wrote in a letter calling for Yiannopoulos to be disinvited."

Here is where boobs like Professor Smith are dead wrong: If he objects to speakers like Ben Shapiro and Milo Yiannopoulos on campus, that is pretty mild compared to some of the characters I have heard over the years, such as anti-Semitic firebrand Amir Abdel Malik Ali, who I have confronted with hardball questions several times when he has spoken at UC Irvine. Yet, I never once challenged his right to speak. I never demanded that his appearances be cancelled.

Similarly, I have recently been involved in a back and forth with UCI officials over the recent experience of Sekou Odinga at UCI, a man who was involved in the 1981 Brinks robbery in Nyack, New York that left two policemen and a Brinks guard dead. What I objected to was his self description about being a "US political prisoner of war" appearing on the UCI School of Humanities event announcement as if it were fact.

But Ellenhorn is correct. Nobody is forcing anybody at USC to come and listen to his invited speakers. Instead, they are free to crawl up in the fetal position in their designated "safe spaces" and cover their ears.

Maybe they should put a Trojan on Tommy Trojan to protect him as well.