After approving Robert Spencer’s appearance at a YAF-sponsored lecture, The Truman State University administration has caved to the demands of leftist snowflakes who were apparently triggered by the idea of a conservative appearing on their campus.
Once the conservative club at Truman State confirmed their campus lecture with Robert Spencer and began promoting it, campus leftists launched their anti-conservative campaign with an online petition demanding the university cancel the student-organized and run event. Calling Spencer an “anti-Islamic extremist” and “outright Islamaphobe,” the leftists were clearly shaken by the thought of a conservative voice being heard at their school.
The conservative club remained resolute in their commitment to bringing real intellectual diversity to their peers, and continued to boldly promote their upcoming event.
When their petition predictably failed to gain traction, the leftist students evidently escalated their victimization tactic and raised their objections with the university administration.
As happens all too often, the school quickly capitulated to the leftists’ demands and announced the following plan of appeasement in an email to students: the Executive Director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations of Missouri (CAIR-MO) would be brought in by the Muslim Student Association to speak immediately before the conservative club’s lecture with Robert Spencer in the same venue the conservative students had reserved.
Truman State’s Vice President for Student Affairs Lou Ann Gilchrist had this to say in the announcement to students:
Dear Truman Student,
As an institution of higher learning, the University supports the idea of an open dialogue on all topics. This often includes viewpoints many people strongly oppose. Cordial discourse on even the most contentious of topics is a fundamental tenant of a liberal arts education and a hallmark of a free society. This week, two speakers will be brought to campus expressing very different views regarding the beliefs of the Islamic faith.
…..
Help us make both of these events successful by showing how to engage in respectful and civil discourse even when we may passionately disagree with the views that are expressed.
The school portends to be dispassionate about the situation, when in reality the university’s Office of Student Affairs is covering the cost of the Left’s event. This is merely one event featuring a conservative speaker on Truman’s campus, and yet the school apparently felt the need to cave to the crybaby leftists who are so unable to defend their own beliefs, they need the school to fund one of their own to help them cope with conservative ideas.
A cursory search of the leftist speaker being brought in reveals some troubling comments posted on Twitter. The day after President Trump was sworn in, the executive director of CAIR-St. Louis declared it “Day 1 of the revolution.”
He also repeatedly posts about radical “white guys” being a “major problem,” but not radical Muslims, and claims that “white terrorism is the unspoken threat in the US” and shared another article on “10 0f the worst terror attacks by extreme Christians and far-right white men.” Syed also advocated for the arrest of Vice President Mike Pence.
