Had a debate at the diner about that professor getting banned at UNLV

I was grabbing breakfast and overheard two people arguing about Dr. John Smith getting uninvited from UNLV last spring after some student group complained about his views on immigration. One guy said the school was protecting students from hate speech, the other said it was straight up censorship. It got me thinking - where do we draw the line when a speaker hasn't broken any laws, just offended some people? Has anyone else seen this kind of situation play out at their local college?

2 comments

2 Comments

barbara_taylor8316d ago

Yeah so the "protecting students from hate speech" part actually made me reconsider my whole stance on this. I used to be all for just letting anyone speak no matter what because I thought free speech was absolute. But then a similar thing happened at my cousin's college in Ohio and I saw how much damage it did to the campus environment. Students felt unsafe walking around, some transfers happened, it was a mess. Now I think there's a middle ground where the school can say no to someone who's clearly trying to stir up hate even if they didn't technically break a law. It's not about censoring ideas, it's about not letting your campus become a platform for bigotry. Yeah I know some people will call that censorship but I changed my mind after seeing the real world consequences.

claire44316d ago

Kinda ironic how free speech people usually hate it when you actually use it to disagree with them, huh?