Dozens of faculty members at Franklin & Marshall College, a small college in Pennsylvania, have signed a petition calling on the school’s president to take action against an upcoming Young Americans for Freedom lecture featuring Paula Scanlan, a former teammate of “Lia” Thomas, a man who pretended to be a girl to compete on the women’s swim team.
Scanlan is scheduled to speak at the college Wednesday evening.
The petition calls Young America’s Foundation a “well-funded, far-right ‘culture war’ machine that seeks to sow division, provoke backlash, generate publicity, and weaken public confidence in higher education,” before going on to criticize Scanlan’s history of “misgendering” Thomas during previous lectures.
While the faculty signatories do state that they are not necessarily calling for the event to be canceled, that doesn’t change the fact that they’re actively fighting against basic truth and the rights of actual women and girls. If these “academics” are so concerned about the public’s perception of their industry, perhaps they can start restoring it by acknowledging common sense realities.
“My perspective, YAF’s, and Paula Scanlan’s bring more diversity of thought to the campus of F&M which is much needed,” Makoa Niebel, chairman of F&M Young Americans for Freedom, told the New Guard.
In addition to the faculty petition, administrators are also working to derail the event. When enabling students to bring the boldest voices in the Conservative Movement to campus, YAF not only aims to bring their messages to the on-campus student audience, but also to the more than 1.6 million people who subscribe to YAFTV on YouTube.
In an apparent attempt to minimize the impact of the event, F&M Director of Student Engagement Stephanie Kessler is not allowing Scanlan’s event to be recorded, telling the YAF chair that “the college is not comfortable” with the proposal.
