Columbia University Black Students’ Organization Seeks to Censor College Republicans

screenshot of Fox News commentator Tucker Carlson, taken from Columbia University College Republicans homepage
Fox News commentator Tucker Carlson weighed in when Columbia's Black Students' Organization took aim at the College Republicans' campus chapter (screenshot via Columbia University College Republicans)
Columbia University's Black Students' Organization wants the school's governing board to pull funding from the College Republicans, citing the "hate speech" of the latter's campus invitees.

If heckling fails, hit ’em where it really hurts: the wallet. As Reason.com reports, that’s the strategy of the Columbia University Black Students’ Organization (BSO), which aims to silence the school’s College Republicans chapter and stop them from inviting squawkers of “hate speech” to campus.

The Republicans recently sponsored events that featured Islam basher Tommy Robinson, founder of the English Defence League, as well as homegrown alt-righter Mike Cernovich. Protests have met with mixed results in interrupting these activities, so this time the BSO is going for the revenue stream.

Late last month the BSO asked Columbia’s Student Governing Board to deny funding to the College Republicans and to “derecognize” the group.

Last year, Columbia’s plutocrat pachyderms netted $4,640 per annum from a pot of about $250,000 that students ante up to the governing board, according to a recent story in the Columbia Daily Spectator, the campus student newspaper.

The BSO suggested that the governing board redistribute the College Republicans’ bankroll to groups whose views are more in line with the BSO’s own.

At a recent student council meeting, Nicole Allicock, the council’s vice president of policy, appeared to agree.

“If the word ‘white supremacist’ can be applied to a person, maybe don’t invite them to our campus,” Allicock reportedly said during the meeting.

According to the student newspaper, Allicock wants the College Republicans to submit a list of future speakers so the CCSC can approve it in advance, ostensibly to muzzle “hate speech.”

Per Reason contributor Lindsay Marchello:

The BSO and the CCSC [seem to be] interested in allocating funds based on popular opinion. Clearly the opinions of the College Republicans are not in vogue. “When you attempt to intellectualize the fruitfulness of literal hate speech, you dehumanize your peers,” according to the BSO proposal.

But what if the tides turn on campus and suddenly BSO’s viewpoints were considered too dangerous to fund? Censoring College Republicans through the budget sets a dangerous precedent for how the university funds student organizations, several of which are currently led by students who wrongly assume the status quo will never change.

This isn’t the only reason to reject this proposal. BSO’s entire argument is predicated on the idea that speech is violence — a specious concept in its own right.

If you feel as though though you’re reading about someone being shut down, shouted down, or drowned out on a campus over somewhere just about every week, it’s probably because someone’s being shut down, shouted down, or drowned out on a campus somewhere just about every week — be it a professional provocateur like Milo Yiannopoulos or the executive director of the ACLU of Virginia or the president of the University of Oregon.

Click here to follow Reason.com on Twitter, and click the link below to read the entire piece on this “hate speech” foolishness:

“Columbia Student Group Thinks Student Groups it Disagrees with Should Be Defunded”

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About Stephen Lemons

Stephen Lemons is an award-winning investigative journalist with more than 20 years of experience covering everything from government corruption to white-supremacist gangs. In addition to Front Page Confidential, his work has appeared in Phoenix New Times, the Los Angeles Times, Salon.com, and the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Report magazine.