After disinviting Riley from speaking, Virginia Tech has now re-invited him.

National Review reports.

Virginia Tech Relents and Re-Invites Jason Riley to Speak on Campus

We welcomed the statement this morning from Virginia Tech University’s president Timothy Sands saying that the university is inviting Jason Riley to speak on campus. President Sands’s decision to invite Mr. Riley reverses a disinvitation sent to Mr. Riley last week. This is very good news, and it has now been confirmed by telephone to Mr. Riley by the dean of the business school. The dean has also retracted his “open letter” statement claiming that Mr. Riley was never invited in the first place, and promised that he would make a public apology. Mr. Riley has been offered his choice of giving the BB&T lecture, which he was originally invited to present, or to speak in another venue.

Reversals of this sort on the part of a university are extremely rare. This one came about because of the pressure of thousands of people who responded to our original report on the invitation in National Review, the army of bloggers and tweeters who took up the issue, Mr. Riley’s compelling op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, and his appearance on Fox with Megyn Kelly. Behind all these lay one indispensable piece of evidence: Mr. Riley had saved the e-mail invitation that the authorities at Virginia Tech said did not exist.

Mr. Riley benefited from a degree of media access and support that is seldom available to the casualties of political correctness. His victory is to be celebrated, but we should not forget the many others who get similarly dismissive treatment from colleges and universities but who do not have recourse to mass media.


 
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