Just weeks after banning the second of two conservative speakers from its campus, DePaul University announced that it will host a “Presidents Series” on “Race and Free Speech” designed to bring opposing viewpoints to the DePaul student body.
But guess what it’s missing? Any speakers who aren’t solidly liberal.
The series, DePaul says, is part of a “broad action plan” designed to address “issues” that they say “came to a tipping point” last spring, when DePaul students stormed the stage while conservative provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos was speaking, threatened his security and ultimately got him banned.
The school later prohibited conservative Ben Shapiro from speaking on campus because DePaul administration said he and Milo were threats to order.
They now say, though, that they’re committed to exposing DePaul students to a range of ideas, so they can “engage in a dialogue” about “race, free speech and hate speech” and the current political climate.
But so far, the lineup includes only solidly liberal speakers. The series will kick off with #BlackLivesMatter activist and Georgetown professor Michael Eric Dyson (who famously said that “whiteness is blindness”). Next will be Jeff Chang, Stanford professor and director of the schools “diversity in the arts” program. Then, a panel on “Inclusive Speech and Expression.”
There are a few less overtly progressive events, including a discussion with the chairman of the U.S. Commission of Civil Rights, and lunch with Professor Freeman Hrabowski, an advocate for minority participation in the sciences, but the slate couldn’t rightfully be called “diverse,” at least politically.
Not a single outspoken conservative is on the agenda, though there are several outspoken liberals. No discussion on the slate is designed to confront DePaul students’ ideological prejudices, as exhibited towards Milo and Ben. In fact, not a single assigned speaker presents a true “opposing viewpoint” to #BlackLivesMatter’s activists.
DePaul’s Young Americans for Freedom chapter told Campus Reform that the speaker series simply reflects DePaul’s lack of interest in true diversity of thought.
Ben Shapiro, who is now banned from speaking on DePaul’s campus, wrote in an email statement that “DePaul’s own commitment to free speech extends only to quashing it if their students can’t control their reactions to ideas with which they disagree. Furthermore, for DePaul to host a series on race, when they simply allow the Black Lives Matter movement to run roughshod over opposing viewpoints, demonstrates that they’re liars as well as ideological fascists: They’re pretending that one side of the debate represents the entirety of the debate.”
DePaul says it will allow YAF and others to submit proposals for future speakers, but YAF believes it’s unlikely their proposals will be approved.