How Free Speech Died on Campus

1) Silencing people is done in many ways - you can shut them up, shut them out, or shout them down. In several examples given in the article, the Colleges are clearly allowing free speech by allowing voices, information and views which get drowned out from being heard.

In Islamic awareness week, stopping people from talking about how bad Islam is, how terribly women are treated. They were stopped. Someone repeating the status quo really has only been silenced on that instance, and in order to allow another view point to be understood and examined. That is the essence of supporting free speech.

2) Vis-A-Vis Ann Coulter, this is the WSJ:

>To be clear, Mr. McShane didn't block Ms. Coulter's speech, but he said that her presence would serve as a "test" for Fordham. A day later, the students disinvited Ms. Coulter. Mr. McShane then praised them for having taken "responsibility for their decisions" and expressing "their regrets sincerely and eloquently."

Not mentioned there, is the letter sent out by College Republicans

> The College Republicans regret the controversy surrounding our planned lecture featuring Ann Coulter. The size and severity of opposition to this event have caught us by surprise, and caused us to question our decision to welcome her to Rose Hill. Looking at the concerns raised about Ms. Coulter, many of them reasonable, we have determined that some of her comments do not represent the ideals of the College Republicans and are inconsistent with both our organization’s mission, and the University’s. We regret that we failed to thoroughly research her before announcing, that is our error and we do not excuse ourselves for it. Consistent with our strong disagreement with certain comments by Ms. Coulter we have chosen to cancel the event and rescind Ms. Coulter’s invitation to speak at Fordham. We made this choice freely, before Father McShane’s email was sent out and we became aware of his feelings – had the President simply reached out to us before releasing his statement he would have learned that the event was being cancelled. We hope the University community will forgive the College Republicans for our error, and continue to allow us to serve as its main voice of the sensible, compassionate, and conservative political movement that we strive to be. We fell short of that standard this time, and we offer our sincere apologies.