In Arizona, this past week, 30 plus out-of-touch, self-righteous Barrett Honor College professors at Arizona State University sent a letter protesting the speakers at an event featuring an enlightening panel discussion about the human pursuit of “Health, Wealth and Happiness.” Those speakers?
Long-time radio host and intellectual Dennis Prager,
Robert Kiyosaki, author of “Rich Dad Poor Dad,” and
Medical Doctor, Radha Gopalan
with remarks from Charlie Kirk, the founder of Turning Point USA, spoke at the Barrett Honors College at Arizona State University on Wednesday.
As is the case most of the time when conservative personalities come on any college campus, there was a concentrated effort by the progressive left to stop them from speaking. For the purpose of this opinion piece, let me focus on Charlie Kirk. Mr. Kirk neither raises my blood pressure nor has persuaded me on issues I have disagreed with him. However, no matter how you view him in the political arena, for the better or worse, he’s an important political player. Preventing him from speaking is not going to diminish his influence; it will rather increase it. More importantly, he deserves the right to share his views and opinions. Sort of that old First Amendment thing. I know it is unfashionable on the left now.
The concentrated effort – let’s call it the “front” -- came from more than 30 Honors College professors who signed a letter to the dean to stop the talk. Media Matters, a left-wing opposition research, tried to stop it.
The professors’ efforts would have been objectionable on its own, but the connection with Media Matters makes it worse. Founded by David Brock, Media Matters has been an arm of the Democratic Party, disguising itself as a “media research” organization, while promoting the left-wing agenda through ad hominem attacks on people who disagree with the left. Most infamous case is launching anti-Semitic attack on Harvard professor Alan Dershowitz over his support for Israel and disagreements with the Obama administration on Israel policy by calling him an “Israel firster,” a phrase frequently used by David Duke. You’d think that progressives would stop at plagiarizing the former grand wizard of KKK! But Media Matters’s ethical lows have no bottom.
Media Matters is an organization which raises a lot of revenue, a lot of it through donations from unions, especially teachers’ unions, and spends most of it on hefty salaries of its employees. Brock, who left the organization in November, gave himself a quarter million dollars a year. Other officers received similar six figure salaries. Leaked emails and other strong pieces of evidence show that they have been in contact with Democrats, such as then-Attorney General Eric Holder and Hillary Clinton’s campaign in 2016, to promote their talking points. None of this should surprise you. Brock was a Republican attack dog in the 1990s, who has since admitted to fabricating stories to attack Democrats. In the 2000s, he had a conversion to progressivism, but not to becoming more ethical.
Now, you might be thinking about how these things connect. The answer is simple: Being institutionally a questionable organization, Media Matters would do anything to keep the donations coming and engage in performative progressiveness, as long as they don’t have to engage in meaningful debate. In this case, there is no ethical commitment to freedom. A majority of the supposed damning referenced statements used by the hypocritical ASU Barrett professors for their protest letter, came from Media Matters. Like a sloppy college student doing a late-night term paper, they didn’t even provide original work. They simply referenced a union funded; progressive group hell bent on denying free speech. I bet these professors will enjoy the lazy elements of ChatGPT for the future research.
Together with the ASU Barrett professors, the two groups tried to prevent Mr. Kirk from speaking because they don’t like what he has to say.
As a conservative, I don’t like most of what is said on campuses. But unless the speaker is encouraging violence in our society, I never advocate for preventing someone from speaking for what they believe as you can only know what is right if it survives the scrutiny of hostile opposition and other ideas. It is understandable that Media Matters doesn’t believe this because they are not invested in ideas. But I find myself scratching my head that professors, whose profession is examining ideas, cannot see this point.
But Arizonans should be proud of their state, and Sun Devils should be proud of their university. Year after year, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) has given ASU a green light in freedom of speech, making it one of the very few American universities that remains free. It is one of the very few American institutions where wokeism and conservatism can coexist. So, in the typical ASU manner, Kirk ended up delivering his speech.
Last summer marked Michael Crow’s twentieth anniversary as the president of ASU. Throughout his tenure, ASU has survived as a capital of academic freedom, added an intellectually conservative great books school, and allowed conservatives to be open about their beliefs. The bad news is that 30 plus professors objected to Kirk’s speaking at ASU, but the much better news is that there were only 30 of them. Their request for suppression was rejected anyway. In addition, 10 Barrett faculty members didn’t sign the letter protesting his appearance. As Mr. Kirk said, “Arizona State University deserves a lot of credit for allowing the event to continue.”
The sad part of the story is that nobody will remember what Kirk said. What everyone will remember is the effort to cancel him. And what comes out of it is the fundraising emails sent by Media Matters, exploiting this incident, and raising a lot of money.
So, the questions remain: 1) who organized these professors to be a front for another progressive melt down and 2) why did the professors work with Media Matters, a Democratic Party public relations arm, to do their dirty work? But for now, we could celebrate that freedom of speech lives another day at Arizona State University.
Photo: wolterke - stock.adobe.com
Thanks for linking to the actual letter, so that we can see the real detailed reasons for the professors protesting these speakers, which have little to do with them being "conservative".