The University of Washington pays lip service to freedom of speech, but routinely lets leftist mobs disrupt or shut down campus events they disagree with.
On January 21, a leftist mob shut down yet another conservative event. It disrupted a speech by a speaker opposed to “transgenderism,” by pulling a campus fire alarm, breaking a window, writing graffiti in the building and other tactics, as even the University of Washington’s spokersperson concedes.
The University claims it is “committed to free exchange of ideas and the principles of academic freedom, in accordance with the First Amendment.”
But as University of Washington science professor Cliff Mass notes, “If that was true, the university would deal with these … violent protesters,” but “They’re just not doing it.” In May 2024, Mass took issue with how the university “caved” to anti-Israel protesters by agreeing to waive tuition for 20 students and other demands in exchange for clearing out an illegal protest encampment on campus.
“It’s pretty much the same thing,” Mass said about the leftist mob that shut down the January 21 event.
The Leadership Institute’s Olivia Krolczyk hosted the event in a campus building with the conservative group Turning Point USA and posted video of protesters banging on doors to the building, and setting off a noise device. The event was then canceled because security could not be maintained. Krolczyk had to wear protective gear provided by cops to be able to leave the building.
A University spokeksman laid the blame for the shutting down of the event both on leftist protesters “whose actions were disruptive and damaging” but also on Krolczyk for “seeking to antagonize” the leftist protesters.
Many of the conservative events that wereshut down were organized by the conservative group Turning Point USA. Its University of Washington chapter filmed a confrontation with a pro-transgender activist in Spring 2023 who flipped a table and screamed “Nazi” at the event’s organizers. When Turning Point activist Jonathan Choe filmed an anti-Israel encampment in May 2024, protesters wearing black chased him away, and beat his personal security guard until the man’s face bled. The university claimed it would investigate, but never arrested or reported any of the attackers.
Anti-Israel protesters also disrupted a meeting of the University of Washington’s Board of Regents last fall, shouting at a Jewish speaker, and driving the chair to end the meeting, according to KOMO News.
Turning Point USA called the January 21 disruption “a clear assault on free speech….While the university claims to uphold the First Amendment, its failure to ensure a safe environment for open dialogue tells a different story. It’s time for the university to honor its stated values and protect the rights of all students to engage in respectful, uninhibited discourse instead of placing the blame on the speaker.”
Progressive officials have often refused to remove disruptive left-wing protest encampments. Such trespassing would not be tolerated if the protesters’ ideology were different — such as if they were white nationalists, whose viewpoint is protected by the First Amendment despite their repellent ideology.
White nationalist speech — or even speech that is wrongly perceived as white nationalism — not only results in campus discipline, but also results in police investigations, even when such speech does not violate any law or involve trespassing on college property or interfere with college operations. This favoritism by progressive cities violates the First Amendment. According to the Supreme Court, the government cannot favor certain kinds of protests over others. (See Police Department v. Mosley (1972)).
Left-wing protesters are being treated much better than right-wing oddballs who got kicked off campus or investigated by police, even when they didn’t make much noise or interfere with college operations. The black podcaster Coleman Hughes points to one example of the banning from campus of a silly white student who said things like “I don’t hate other people. I just love white men” and “white people are the best…”
Multiple colleges — including a state university — got the police to investigate after people posted flyers saying “It’s OK to Be White” or “Huzzah for Dixie,” even though such speech was protected by the First Amendment under court rulings like Levin v. Harleston (1992) and Iota Xi Chapter v. George Mason University (1993), as law professors like Eugene Volokh noted.
The president of Western Connecticut State University threatened the unknown persons who posted flyers saying “It’s OK to Be White”, saying that they would face the “severest disciplinary actions, including dismissal as well as possible civil and criminal actions.” The university said its officials immediately reported the flyers to local and state police and the FBI office in New Haven, all of whom were investigating who made the flyers.
When someone posted non-threatening confederate-flag flyers saying “Huzzah for Dixie” at American University in 2017, the local FBI office investigated the flyers as if the First Amendment did not exist, at the request of the university. Law enforcement investigated the speech, even though courts in Washington, DC had ruled that far worse, blatantly racist speech was protected by the First Amendment. (See, e.g., United States v. Popa (1999)).
