House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi: snowflake-melter?
During a Tuesday town hall event at Georgetown University, the California Democrat criticized students who censor campus speakers, arguing their tactics are counterproductive. “Put me down as one who just says ‘don’t make a fuss.’ If somebody’s going to come and speak, let them speak,” Pelosi said. “That doesn’t always go over well in my district in San Francisco, but I do think — why empower them? If you so disagree with what they have to say, why empower them?”
The University of California, Berkeley, which has taken center stage in the battle for campus free speech, falls outside Pelosi’s congressional district, but within neighboring Rep. Barbara Lee’s, D-Calif. At Tuesday’s event, hosted by the Georgetown’s Institute of Politics and Public Service, Pelosi urged would-be student censors to “give everyone their say,” asserting that disagreeable speakers undercut their own credibility when given the opportunity to be heard.
“Just don’t show up. Why give them a crowd?” Pelosi continued. “I think let’s give everyone their say and let them hoist themselves on their own petards if they’re coming in with anti-Semitism and anti-women and anti-the rest, because while I don’t like what they have to say, I wouldn’t empower them, and when you do that you empower them. That’s just my view.”
Hopefully, Pelosi isn’t conflating mainstream conservative speakers with anti-Semitic and sexist speakers (though I’m not inclined to give her the benefit of the doubt), but even so, the top House Democrat’s comments put her among a group of other leading liberals who have drawn a line at so-called “no-platforming” efforts. Back in 2015, then-President Barack Obama had even stronger words for censorious students. “I’ve heard of some college campuses where they don’t want to have a guest speaker who is too conservative or they don’t want to read a book if it has language that is offensive to African-Americans or somehow sends a demeaning signal toward women,” he said.
“I’ve got to tell you, I don’t agree with that, either,” insisted Obama. “I don’t agree that you, when you become students at colleges, have to be coddled and protected from different points of view.”
