Leftists refuse to allow Bristol to speak at Washinton U. (Updated)

Free speech loses another round on St. Louis campus
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At Washington University in St. Louis, a campus with a history of First Amendment abuses, the American Constitution lost another round this week as radical leftist students using intimidation tactics have managed to get Bristol Palin's scheduled speech and participation in a panel discussion cancelled.

Washington University's Student Health Advisory Committee had extended an invitation to Palin, a spokeswoman to prevent teen pregnancy, to speak on abstinence as part of the university's Student Sexual Responsibility Week.

But because of a growing controversy among undergraduates over the decision to pay for her talk with student-generated funds, the advisory committee and Palin decided Thursday night "that the message that they intended on sharing would be overshadowed by controversy," according to a university statement.

Scott Elman, president of the advisory committee, said the decision to halt Palin's appearance as a keynote speaker was "100 percent mutual" between Palin and the committee. Elman added that he was very disappointed that students weren't more open to having Palin speak.

As soon as Bristol's appearance was announced, the totalitarian left organized protests, created Facebook pages, stomped their feet and whined that they would hold their collective breath until they turned into blue babies, as we reported Thursday. The tactics worked, and liberty died another little death, one of just many that we have witnessed at the country's leftist dominated universities over the past six decades. Washington U. is one of the most radically left of America's campuses, with a history of free speech abuses.

In October of 2007, antiwar student activists managed to suppress free speech debates which were intended to be part of Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week by plastering American University's campus with fake anti-Muslim posters to support their bogus charges of a "climate of hate" which they blamed on the local chapter of the Young America's Foundation. although the leftist students later admitted that the posters "a hoax," they nevertheless manged to silence the conservative minority at Washington U. The YAF students, in fact, were subjected to ridicule and abuse, while the instigators got off scot free.

In November of 2009, a campus exhibit which exposed the realities of socialism and communism staged by The Young Americans For Liberty was shut down after complaints were lodged by Marxist Professors. The display was removed from American University's campus, ironically, on the Day of Freedom in memory of the tearing down of the Wall in Berlin.

In December of last year, at an event with avowed communist and former Obama administration "Green Czar" Van Jones which was billed as "open to the public," a citizen journalist who was there to ask Jones questions was harassed by University officials, roughed up and had his camera confiscated.

Update: Jennifer at Cubachi notes:

"The irony that liberal students who are supporters of big government programs are protesting because of costs."

- JP