A sad commentary on Freedom of Speech, the Left, and UW, one of this state's most prestigious colleges.
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ZitatThe president of the University of Washington College Republicans says she received an anonymous flyer that labels her as a racist because she invited an alt-right speaker to campus. And she told KIRO Radio’s Jason and Burns that she’s not the only person receiving intimidating flyers for promoting free speech.
Jessica Gamble said she received this “Wanted” type flyer via email that features photos of her under the title “the racist in your class.” The flyer criticizes the UW College Republicans for hosting Milo Yiannopoulos, the controversial Breitbart news editor associated with the “alt-right” and who was banned from Twitter for allegedly inspiring racism and misogyny against comedian Leslie Jones. It also alleges that Gamble has “close affiliations with white supremacists and Neo-Nazis” and invites people to contact both her and her father, listing phone numbers, emails and social media accounts.
“I kind of had a feeling something like this might happen but I was a little bit in shock and so I messaged my parents because actually I was at a meeting last night and said, ‘Don’t freak out, don’t be mad, I’m gonna send you something, just read through it. Dad, if you get calls, this is why,’” she told KIRO Radio’s Jason and Burns. “And so I sent it to them and they got mad, they got scared, all that kind of stuff.”
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Yiannopoulos is scheduled to speak to the UW Republicans on Jan. 20. A Change.org petition that calls for UW President Ana Mari Cauce to ban the Conservative from speaking had more than 4,300 signatures as of Wednesday morning. The petition cites a university code on discriminatory harassment as rationale for the ban. Cauce wrote in her blog that she does not approve of the speaker but that protecting free speech is important and that “we have reviewed this event with the State Attorney General’s office and there are not, at this time, sufficient grounds to ban him from speaking on our campus, although we continue to monitor what is going on as he speaks elsewhere.”
There have also been appeals to cancel his planned Jan. 19 speech at WSU, though Breitbart published a story last month that the university was demanding a $2,000 security fee but that the “university’s security team would not seek to protect Yiannopoulos should an agitator rush the stage.”