Syndicated columnist George F. Will was invited to speak at Scripps College to a program designed to allow students to hear conservative points-of-view.
Key word: “Was.”
According to The Claremont Independent, the conservative columnist’s invitation to speak at the school was revoked for, it is believed, his June column on sexual assault on college campuses.
Will was scheduled to speak at the ninth annual Elizabeth Hubert Malott Public Affairs Program. Its mission, according the Independent, is to “bring speakers to campus whose political views differ from the majority of students at the all-women’s college.”
In other words, the long-time conservative columnist’s invitation was snatched away because of his conservative beliefs.
“It was in the works and then it wasn’t in the works,” Will told the Independent. “They didn’t say that the column was the reason, but it was the reason.”
The Elizabeth Hubert Malott Public Affairs Program was established according to the Scripps College website, with the belief that “a range of opinions about the world – especially opinions with which we may not agree, or think we do not agree – leads to a better educational experience.”
Previous speakers invited and actually allowed to discuss conservatism at the program were syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer (Feb. 2013) and the Wall Street Journal’s Peggy Noonan (Feb. 2014).
In the column at hand, Will, a Fox News Contributor, blamed progressivism for the collegiate responses to incidents involving alleged sexual assault. (RELATED: George Will Defiant Over Sexual Assault Column Controversy: ‘This Is My Job’)
“[Colleges and Universities] are learning that when they say campus victimizations are ubiquitous (“micro-aggressions,” often not discernible to the untutored eye, are everywhere), and that when they make victimhood a coveted status that confers privileges, victims proliferate,” he says. “And academia’s progressivism has rendered it intellectually defenseless now that progressivism’s achievement, the regulatory state, has decided it is academia’s turn to be broken to government’s saddle.”
In recent years, the likes of Chief Justice John Roberts, conservative commentator Ann Coulter, former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and conservative neurosurgeon Ben Carson all either had commencement speaking invitations revoked, declined or protested by students at the respective university.