Following violence, Penn State pres. defends decision to not cancel Proud Boys founder event
Penn State’s top executive defended Tuesday the university’s initial decision not to intervene with an on-campus event featuring two far-right speakers, including the founder of the Proud Boys.
President Neeli Bendapudi absolved only the students who organized an alternative event and the several hundred faculty, staff and students who attended an event sponsored by the Student Programming Association.
Proud Boys founder Gavin McInnes, self-proclaimed “professional troll” Alex Stein and counter-protesters were keelhauled by Bendapudi.
The university, which said it would not ban or cancel the presentation because of free speech, reversed course less than an hour before the event was scheduled to begin.
Penn State police, Bendapudi wrote, were “concerned about escalating violence and public safety.”
“Tonight, Stein and McInnes will celebrate a victory for being canceled, when in actuality, they contributed to the very violence that compromised their ability to speak,” Bendapudi wrote. “Tonight, counter-protestors also will celebrate a victory that they forced the University to cancel this event, when in actuality they have furthered the visibility of the very cause they oppose.”
One woman was seen lying on the ground, near 10 empty water bottles, while her friends poured water over her eyes. Another student who said he was caught in the cross-fire kept pouring water over his eyes as he walked away from the scene alongside a friend.
Bendapudi wrote it was her “understanding” that Stein entered the crowd and raised tensions. It was unclear, she wrote, who resorted to physical confrontation and the use of pepper spray against the crowd and police officers.
No one was seriously injured, she wrote. The university did not immediately respond Tuesday to a request for further comment.
The event, billed as a “politically provocative” comedy, was organized by registered student organization Uncensored America.
The university lambasted the demonstrations over the course of two weeks, writing in an Oct. 11 statement that they “find ourselves in the unenviable position of sharing space with individuals whose views differ dramatically from our University’s values of inclusion, diversity, equity and respect.”
Administrators fielded criticism from around the country for not stopping the event, with multitudes questioning the university’s assertion it could not cancel Monday’s presentation without violating the U.S. Constitution.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania — and more than a half-dozen other First Amendment experts — said Penn State is almost certainly correct.
Because the university is largely public, and because a recognized student organization invited the speakers as all such organizations are permitted to do, it cannot make exceptions to its own rules because it finds the speakers’ rhetoric “hateful and discriminatory.”
“Tonight, the message too many people will walk away with is that one can manipulate people to generate free publicity, or that one can restrict speech by escalating protest to violence. These are not ideas that we can endorse as an institution of higher education,” Bendapudi wrote. “We cannot laud academic freedom; and then abandon the constitutional right to free expression which undergirds academic freedom. Over the coming weeks, let us reflect on the role we must all play in encouraging vigorous debate and also upholding the values we hold dear.”
This story was originally published October 25, 2022 at 12:52 PM.