Let’s conduct an experiment this year!

A group of conservative students at Barnard College are upset over their school’s choice for commencement speaker. Progressives who claim the students have no case under the concept of “free speech” should also be chill when conservatives are chosen to speak at school events.

We’ll just see if that is the case!

It will be fascinating to observe the comments.

Barnard College’s decision to select Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards as its graduation speaker has triggered a backlash from conservative students.

Katie Christensen, a senior at the New York City school who is president of the Columbia University College Republicans, wrote a March 10 op-ed in the student newspaper calling the choice of speaker “deeply divisive.”

“While I do not question the efforts and intentions of the administration in choosing the commencement speaker, it is truly devastating that Barnard chose a speaker who bears the banner of abortion — one of the most polarizing, impassioned subjects of morality in the history of modern civilization,” said Miss Christensen in the Columbia Spectator.

Planned Parenthood provides gynecological and other health-care services to millions of women, but it may be best known as the nation’s largest provider of abortion services. An estimated one-third of all U.S. abortions are performed by doctors at Planned Parenthood clinics.

Ms. Richards is slated to deliver the keynote address at the May 18 commencement ceremony at Radio City Music Hall in New York City. She will also receive the Barnard Medal of Distinction, “the college’s highest honor,” according to a press release on the Barnard College website.

…In her article, Ms. Christensen said the Richards selection comes as an affront to those who oppose abortion.

“By choosing such a controversial figure, Barnard implies that students who take deep offense to this choice do not have valid concerns, and their beliefs do not matter,” said Ms. Christensen. “Choosing a speaker of such moral and political controversy seems to assume that the opposing minority will be shamed into silence for their beliefs and will take this decision more or less sitting down.”