Reported Discrimination Against Conservatives Speaking at Some Public Colleges

I was watching one of the C-Span channels this morning and there was a program featuring lawyers representing conservatives who claim to have been discriminated against at some public universities regarding speaking engagements.  Two colleges in particular...California @ Berkeley and Washington...were cited by the attorneys for stifling the free speech of conservatives who had been invited to speak on campus by student groups, usually the campus Republican group.  The college administrators' tactics were similar with politically right-leaning speakers: (1) charge an exorbitantly high security fee that is much lower or completely waived for liberal speakers, (2) force the conservative speaker to make his or her presentation in a remote location, often off-campus far from public transportation, (3) place a "curfew", often around 3 pm, as the mandated finishing time for the speech (which inherently creates a schedule conflict with students attending classes), and (4) impose a gag rule prohibiting the student group from promoting the event in the media.  The lawyers noted that speakers for liberal groups and causes were not treated in this manner, and they showed as an example how differently conservative and liberal guest speakers were treated during a calendar period.  I was impressed by the program, but so far haven't found it on the network's webpage...

Free speech as guaranteed by the First Amendment is NOT designed to protect speech that people want to hear: it's aimed at protecting speech that they DON'T want to hear.  If you're a professor, administrator, or student at one of these publicly-funded universities and can't handle someone with a different point of view expressing themselves, then why should you realistically expect those who disagree with your viewpoints and philosophies to respect you when you want to communicate them?  There are two forces going on that are making our society more and more divided and full of hostility.  One is the resurgence of racism and hate groups and the other is runaway political correctness, the adherents of which automatically slap "racism", "sexism", "hate", and other labels on people who don't fit the accusations but who have a different way of seeing things nevertheless.  It's a shame that so many folks idolize their own set ways so much that they are incapable of tolerating another perspective to the point where they fight to prevent its expression...