@yucca10 I understand your concerns, and that the definition of threat and harm need to be narrow. However, I believe that it is justifiable to limit speech which can directly lead to attacks on members of the community. Anti-Israeli speech that is likely to encourage attacks on Israeli Expats or Jews, or, alternatively, anti-Palestinian speech that is likely to encourage attacks of Palestinians or other Muslims should be limited.
BTW, I grew up in Israel, and have served in the IDF in regular and reserves, long enough to hold the rank of first sergeant, and I was a combat soldier for all of those years. I met and married my wife in Israel, and I wouldn’t be surprised if we could trace connections through the Russian immigrant community.
@RayManta You’re right, it was unfair, and I apologize for that. The point I wanted to make is that it is easy to dismiss danger to other people. In this particular case LGBTQ people and minorities were being targeted, so I wanted to present the group which is least affected by the type of policies this guy espouses.
There is a difference between “distasteful”, and “dangerous to others”. Would you find it acceptable for representatives of NAMBLA to be invited to speak at a campus, or people who claimed that rape should be legal? I think that these create danger to people. On the other hand, I find fundamentalist religious beliefs to be distasteful, same for Tea Party politics, NRA, supply side economics, and a thousand other ideologies. However, I’m not advocating from banning them from campus, or anywhere else.
My main criterion for what I think should be banned is: does this ideology/lecture, point of view, etc, point to a specific group of people, defined by religion, ethnicity, skin color, etc, and say that these people are bad for society, and they should be targeted for loss of rights/oppression/violence, etc. That type of speech can very easily lead to violent action against that group. However, even there, the group needs to be vulnerable to that type of activity.
In my opinion, this type of speech can endanger members of the campus community, and a private college is justified in denying use of university facilities and space to speakers who regularly engage in this type of speech.