Just to add, re my post #500: I understand that there are some medical school students who faint while watching their first operation, but go on to become very effective surgeons. No quarrel with these students.
War criminal. He also [disinvited himself back in the day](Kissinger Scared Away From U-M | Ann Arbor District Library)…
Not particularly noteworthy before or after her stint as first lady. I also can’t find evidence that she was ever actually disinvited. Interestingly, she made news for disinviting poets from a traditional White House visit…
Not particularly interesting outside his films, which already say much of what he has to say. More importantly, his disinvitation was at the behest of conservative state politicians, not students.
Pretty obvious–extremely unpopular and divisive president, not a very good public speaker, not known for his substantive remarks, considered by many (rightly or wrongly) just a figurehead for less electable characters like Cheney, Wolfowitz, Feith, and Perle. Don’t think he was ever actually disinvited, anyway.
The Catholic St. Francis decided against a speaker with such strong pro-choice positions. I don’t see any significant student involvement in this decision.
UNM’s large Mexican-American population [made its reasons pretty clear](http://www.activism.com/en_US/petition/disinvite-vicente-fox-from-unm/178856).
Another example of a Catholic university disinviting a speaker whose actions don’t align with its values. In this case, I think it was pretty silly–Rivera posted a topless selfie after drinking a bunch of tequila. Again, not student-driven.
Another one that had nothing to do with students–[the funding was threatened because of her views on Israel](Alice Walker disinvited from University of Michigan over ‘Israel comments’ | The Electronic Intifada).
I don’t have time to march through the rest, but FIRE’s list is scare-mongering and irresponsible. It counts attempts, for one, and makes no distinction between speakers disinvited by administrations or donors and those disinvited at students’ behest. FIRE is an ideological operation, not a free speech defense.
^Marvin: Thanks for taking the time to write that!!
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QM: I think you make some interesting points,. I guess I don’t know if a lawyer needs to understand rape law to pass the bar, since I didn’t make it that far in my studies. It seems to me in most cases, a lawyer could certainly decline to do any rape law. How many lawyers do we need doing rape law?
I took criminal law, maybe 40 years ago, and no rape cases were part of the course. Of course, I’m not sure that was a good thing.
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Tonymom: Do you have anything to add to that excellent link #496 you posted? your thoughts? student reactions?
"George W. Bush
Pretty obvious–extremely unpopular and divisive president, not a very good public speaker, not known for his substantive remarks, considered by many (rightly or wrongly) just a figurehead"
Notre Dame has a tradition of having the current president speak. There were protests from students/alumni when it was Obama’s turn, because Obama was/is pro-choice and that conflicted with the official Catholic position. Yet ND chose to have Obama speak anyway, under the theory that students would still have something to learn from him even if not everything he stood for was in concert w ND’s views.
Is that … Different somehow? I say good for ND.
I know, right? Someone should have told that pesky Martin Luther King, Jr. to stop disrupting the tried-and-true status quo!
I think a speaker on campus should be treated with courtesy and not disrupted. Don’t you? Or I’m guessing you have your list of speakers that “deserve” to be shouted down, and a separate list of speakers that, if they were to be shouted down, you’d cry suppression of free speech and ideas.
“also, in my opinion, it is presumptuous behavior to tell someone sending a gay child off to college how to feel about that experience, unless you have done it yourself.”
It’s also presumptuous to decree that one’s personal experience represents the totality of all parents of gay children.
I do understand your premise, and it seems very thoughtful and well-intentioned. However, is the good intention actually harmful in the end to the student upon said’s graduation?
Specifically, how is this “avoidance” teaching the student how to deal with the real world where the graduate cannot control or expect deference from people around them and such subjects often just randomly come up in conversation? How does a student learn to deal with the Sandusky conversation at the restaurant table next to him? How does the student learn to deal with the news where such topics may come in randomly as breaking news? How does the student deal with such topics at a party?
I have no problem if schools have a policy that a student can excuse themselves when PTSD-inducing subject comes up. In fact, such a policy already exists, as any student can excuse himself at anytime if feeling “sick.”
However, I do not see it as the responsibility of a school or professor to track the conditions of all students and to be reactive to people’s emotional and mental states and have to be giving trigger warning for “you name it.” At some point, someone has to teach the student that coping, not avoidance, is what is necessary, as life will not let him avoid the topic.
@Pizzagirl - I guess Notre Dame thought it was different. Seems anti-freedom for random internet people to second-guess that decision. Honestly, though, what’s Bush going to say that we don’t already know about him? I’d attend a GWB lecture on painting, I guess, but something tells me that’s not what he was going to discuss. Meanwhile, Obama’s a tremendous public speaker (and I’m not a fan of Obama politically).
Maybe, like me, that student grows up to be someone who doesn’t intentionally associate with insensitive people? Maybe, then, that student and others like her make the world a better, more compassionate place? Maybe it’s not our job to decide what the “real world” is and it’s young people’s job to think about what it should be? Maybe social change happens?
@Scipio, I want to thank you for your post and link about disinvites.
There is a link within your link that shows disinvitations from schools.
Your post answers a couple questions. Very helpful.
I am saying the following knowing that FIRE is not always accurate. 
I think a few inaccuracies will be ok.
These arguments that we hear from the right and some free market advocates… That just the left is trying to suppress free speech is incorrect. False. Both the left and the right try to suppress free speech. This is an equal opportunity endeavor.
So you on the right, no. You don’t have a “superior” position on free speech. Sorry.
As far as disinvitations go… The University of Chicago’s rhetoric doesn’t quite match what is going on.
In 2009, the Univ of Chicago disinvited somebody. In 2016, the school disinvited 2 people. This is 2016.
My school was on the list. I don’t think as much as the Univ of Chicago but its close.
I do not recall him going into events and trying to stop speakers and trying to shut those events down. Did I miss that disruptive part of his game plan?
You are confusing the yelling and name-calling, as part of a protest march with trying to impede others from freely speaking, which is what these college students are doing.
However, if MLK was directing people to go to others’ rallies and speaking engagements and be disruptive and trying to shut those events down, then I stand corrected. Please free to point out where MLK was directing people to limit the speech of others.
Sigh.
@dstark – You really didn’t bother to read the detail behind these incidents at all, did you??
If anything, your rhetorical gun is aimed at your own rhetorical foot.
These 3 incidents were mentioned in the link in the very first post. Incidents like these are part of the entire reason why the Dean wrote his letter. Especially the 2 incidents that just occurred in 2016.
One important difference, @dstark and @Scipio , is that the left’s disinvitations are largely at the behest of students, the actual constituents at hand, and the right’s are largely driven and funded by big money think tanks and political orgs.
Show me…
Ok… i see the last column. I will look at it.
Ok… I see the Univ of Chicago events were disruptions. Sorry to all my Univ of Chicago friends.
Back in the '50’s, some of the “disruptive protests” encouraged or orchestrated by MLK jr included:
Rosa Parks sitting in the front of the bus and refusing to move at the bus driver James F. Blake*'s order to make way for a White passenger who got first priority for front/any seats once the front/entire bus was full under the prevailing local laws of the time
Montgomery Bus Boycott which was widely regarded as “disruptive” by the White establishment
Segregated venue “sit-ins” ranging from lunch counters to swimming pools which were regarded by the same prevailing establishment/mainstream opinion of the period as “disruptive”. Some have also argued that owners of public venues had a right to their own prejudices and thus…to discriminate against those they don’t like. Heck, some extreme right libertarians still make that argument today.
Here’s an example: http://www.npr.org/2014/06/13/321380585/remembering-a-civil-rights-swim-in-it-was-a-milestone.
“Honestly, though, what’s Bush going to say that we don’t already know about him? I’d attend a GWB lecture on painting, I guess, but something tells me that’s not what he was going to discuss. Meanwhile, Obama’s a tremendous public speaker (and I’m not a fan of Obama politically).”
I would think that I could learn something interesting from both GWB and Obama (and I’m an Obama supporter).
Yes, @cobrat , and just as importantly, it was the vocal criticisms of MLK’s “disruptions” that spurred him to write the earth-shaking open [“Letter from a Birmingham Jail.”](Letter from a Birmingham Jail [King, Jr.])
@alh
Just that there is a sincere attempt to remind students that their university years will be filled with challenging moments…that’s the point of it.
I must say I dropped my son off feeling very confident he will not be found in a climate which does not encourage intellectual curiosity or that his rights will be in anyway curbed.
Hope some of you caught the University of Chicago prof on CNN addressing this very issue. He pointed that as with many of these stories, the media has blown it up, stoking the fires. Very thoughtful response.