It’s telling that all of these takes depend on complete and obvious falsehoods. Columbia has had extreme speakers for years. Ex: Remember when they had Ahmadinejad give a talk. That’s not what is happening now. 1) The non-violent part is an obvious lie. When the group in question (CUAD) took over Barnard college a few weeks ago, they sent a security guard to the hospital, caused tens of thousands in property damage, took over a school building, disrupted academic activities. A few weeks earlier, they intentionally clogged school toilets with cement and then covered a building with red paint. There are dozens of other examples. They’ve directly harassed and intimidated Jewish students, prevented people from leaving, and assaulted numerous people. For Lee’s analogy to work, you have to pretend all of that is comparable to Ben Shapiro, Milo, or anyone else giving a talk to a student group. 2) Ultimately the Universities have a responsibility to protect both speech and their students (inc a legal obligation to prevent discrimination and targeting based on religion). That’s why you allow protests within the rules. The pro-terrorist (& that is what they are as they themselves admit- so the “pro-Palestinian” label is also misleading) protestors have intentionally ignored those rules and instead engaged in behavior that no school should or would allow under other circumstances. The schools giving up on protecting their students from this behavior isn’t a pro-free speech position. Pretending we have to allow such behavior in the name of speech is nonsense. Finally, foreign students have no legal right to be here. There are millions of students around the world that would desperately like that chance which is why we have a lot of rules related to granting a visa. If they choose to come here just to engage in violent or disruptive behavior, they are clearly violating the conditions of their student visas. That isn’t a speech issue, it’s an immigration issue.
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