Northwestern College Republicans blocked from funding after hosting conservative speaker
Jeremiah Poff
The student government at Northwestern University has blocked the campus College Republicans from using university funds for their programs because of a set of flyers distributed on campus that advertised a campus lecture by a conservative commentator.
Agustin Bayer, the president of the Northwestern College Republicans, told the Washington Examiner in an interview that his club and the Young America’s Foundation had successfully hosted conservative commentator and author James Lindsey on Tuesday night for a campus lecture on the dangers of identity politics. Despite the presence of a few protesters, the event went off without a hitch or extended controversy.
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That was until he learned on Wednesday night, the day after the event, that the Northwestern Associated Student Government held an emergency meeting and voted to freeze all funding to the Northwestern College Republicans due to a flyer that had advertised the event and depicted the gay pride flag as poisonous.
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“At no point did ASG reach out to us,” Bayer said. “At no point has ASG communicated with us, but nonetheless they froze our funding. And the justification given was that some of the promotional materials, some of the flyers were in violation of Northwestern standards.”
The student government claimed that the flyers violated the university’s policy on discrimination and harassment, which says prohibited harassment includes “displaying or circulating offensive objects and pictures that are based on a protected class.”
https://twitter.com/ConceptualJames/status/1654139296612270080?s=20
Molly Whalen, a junior at the university and the co-president of the student government, said the flyers were a “pretty explicit violation” of the harassment policy and that the student government didn’t have the power to block Lindsey from coming to the campus but instead “focused on the part that we could control, which is student group conduct and student group finances,” according to the Daily Northwestern.
But Bayer noted that the policy on harassment includes a caveat that “a person’s subjective belief that behavior is intimidating, hostile, or offensive does not make that behavior harassment.”
“This was just an excuse for them to try to attack our ability to bring in speakers in the future or present any dissenting opinion,” Bayer said, noting that the funding to pay speakers typically comes from the student government.
“This definitely appears to be politically motivated,” he said. “It’s even more laughable because no Northwestern funds were used for either those promotional materials or even for Mr. Lindsey, who they unfairly characterized as a conspiracy theorist and anti-LGBTQ.”
The university did not respond to a request for comment. In an email to the student body, the office of the Northwestern president reportedly said the conservative commentator’s views were “antithetical to Northwestern’s values.”
On Twitter, Lindsey blasted the school for allowing the student government to engage in what he said was “egregious bias.”
https://twitter.com/ConceptualJames/status/1654141025827340291?s=20
“Woke Northwestern students are likely very angry with me, not just because they couldn’t shut down my talk but also because I told them to their faces that they’re disposable tools of a Maoist revolution that will betray them in the end,” Lindsey tweeted. “They laughed, stormed out, slammed doors.”
https://twitter.com/ConceptualJames/status/1654187827989561345?s=20
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The Young America’s Foundation, which co-hosted the event with the College Republicans, said the episode showed the university did not value freedom of expression on its campus.
“The student government’s decision to defund the conservative student group — and the university president’s decision to condemn Dr. Lindsay — sends a message that freedom of expression and speech are not valued on Northwestern’s campus, which is certainly a cause for concern for all who value academic freedom,” the organization said in a blog post.