Michigan State Administration Stands Up to Student Protesters Demanding George Will’s Disinvitation
Maybe the tides are turning in favor of free speech on campus.
Greg Piper at The College Fix has the story:
Michigan State stands up to speech bullies demanding George Will’s disinvitation
George Will won’t be disinvited from speaking at Michigan State University despite protests by some students and a petition drive, provoked by Will’s controversial June column on sexual assault, Inside Higher Ed reports.
University President Lou Anna K. Simon wrote on her website Tuesday that the school invited Will in the spring, before his column in which he made “statements about sexual assault that many found offensive,” and the invitation also included liberal filmmaker Michael Moore as the afternoon commencement speaker.
Simon noted that Will was a lecturer at the university’s James Madison College “some years ago” and he has a “long and distinguished journalistic career”:
George Will is not our first controversial speaker at MSU over the years, and he will undoubtedly not be our last. Some were controversial when they were invited. Others became controversial after our invitation was accepted. We’ve heard from Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton, Jesse Jackson and Desmond Tutu and Elie Weisel. …
I’ll leave it to Mr. Will to defend his comments and values, because this isn’t about George Will. This is about us. And it is about the role of universities in a democratic society.
Michigan State stands up to speech bullies demanding George Will’s disinvitation (The College Fix)
Comments
I have a lot of affection for President Simon. She has been at Michigan State University for a LONG, LONG time now by terms of normal University Presidencies. The average shelf-life of a University leader is something like 5 years. She’s been there almost 10 now (she became President in 2005).
President Simon and the Board of Trustees actually listened to the Conservative Law Society when we demanded that the students who disrupted Congressman Tancredo’s speech at the College of Law be punished by the University AND prosecuted for pulling Fire Alarms after the Campus Police wouldn’t let them shout him down. Those that could be found WERE prosecuted and suspended, if I remember correctly.
She’s not afraid to tell the Leftist organizations on campus “Hey, we let you bring your Leftists here to speak all the time. You live in a glass house. Don’t throw stones.”
The whole piece is available at her “From the President’s Desk” website at http://president.msu.edu/