The student government at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, condemned a planned February lecture by former Attorney General Jeff Sessions as disrespectful to Black History Month and the university’s black community.
The lecture by the former Trump administration official and Republican senator from Alabama will be hosted by the campus College Republicans in conjunction with the Young America’s Foundation and is slated to be the first campus lecture by a conservative speaker in four years.
The Illinois Student Government passed the resolution condemning Sessions’s lecture on Wednesday on a lopsided vote, according to YAF. The resolution seeks to convince the College Republicans to move the event off campus.
“Given that February 1st marks the first day of Black History Month, many within ISG, including the Student Body President, find Mr. Sessions’ presence on campus disrespectful to the Black community,” a student senator wrote to the College Republicans prior to the passage of the resolution. The email also said the Student Government would help facilitate a venue change.
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The resolution, which passed on a 21-5-1 vote, said that “many Black students and students of other marginalized identities view hosting Mr. Sessions on-campus as inappropriate and insensitive” and the presence of his “security personnel may pose a risk to peaceful protestors.”
“The Illinois Student Government condemns Mr. Jeff Sessions presence on campus after failed conversations” with the campus College Republicans and “firmly insists that the keynote event should be taken off-campus and moved to outside of February,” the resolution added.
Sessions served as attorney general under former President Donald Trump from 2017 to 2018 and as a senator from Alabama from 1997 to 2017.
In a statement following the resolution’s passage, the University of Illinois College Republicans said the student government’s actions showed it doesn’t “support diversity of thought on campus.”
“Though they claim to represent the student body, their attempt to exclude conservative voices from campus suggests they represent far fewer. Intolerance, for the sake of tolerance, is no virtue at all,” the organization said.
Kara Zupkus, a spokeswoman for the Young America’s Foundation, told the Washington Examiner that the Illinois Student Government’s efforts to push the event off campus speaks “volumes to the credibility of their ridiculous arguments.”
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“We invite anyone who disagrees with Mr. Sessions’ message to participate in the Q&A portion of the event,” Zupkus said.
