Like many other organizations, the MLA has been completely taken over by leftists.

Scott Jaschik reports at Inside Higher Ed.

Marching Against Campus Carry

AUSTIN, Texas — Chanting, “Gun-free UT. Make it safe for you and me,” and, “Guns are not a teaching tool. They do not belong in school,” more than 200 attendees at the Modern Language Association’s annual meeting marched to the Texas Capitol Friday to protest the state’s new “campus carry” law.

The law, which will take effect this year, allows guns into public college classrooms and dormitories — much to the anger of many professors at Texas and elsewhere. Many other states are considering similar legislation, although bills in other states would give public colleges more leeway to block guns from some locations. Texas, where conservative lawmakers control the Legislature, has in the past few years passed numerous laws to loosen or eliminate controls on guns. For example, starting this year, guns are allowed in state psychiatric facilities.

But it is the law permitting guns on public college campuses that has particularly upset faculty members. They built their protest around teaching and books, talking about how they need to create environments to discuss controversial works without any threat of violence.

Attendees first gathered at one of the convention hotels, where the MLA exercised its rights as a private organization to ban people from carrying weapons.

Roland Greene, a professor of English and comparative literature at Stanford University and president of the MLA, said the association wanted Texas faculty members to know that “we stand with you.”

He said he could think of many situations in his teaching career when “uncomfortable situations could have become a crisis,” or “wouldn’t have taken place at all,” had it been possible to have guns in the classroom. Greene and others said that keeping guns out of classrooms was essential if people want open discussion to happen.

In between-session chatter and at the rally, MLA’s involvement against campus carry drew widespread praise. Many members said they were proud to see the association use its meeting here to take a stand. The MLA is one of 29 scholarly associations that have jointly condemned the campus carry law.