Black conservative author and columnist Jason L. Riley offers a thoughtful perspective on race, but students at Virginia Tech have been prevented from hearing it after he was disinvited. “The message conveyed to students is that people who challenge liberal dogma are not very welcome,” Riley writes for The Wall Street Journal.
Liberals control classroom instruction as well as campus speakers. Riley references Passing on the Right, an analysis of the state of conservative professors in academia by Professors Joshua Dunn and Jon Shields. Professors have told conservative students not to take their class, and liberal students have outed their conservative professors. Students are also discouraged from going into certain fields for their political views.
Speakers have been disinvited from campuses before for holding unpopular views, but “the intimidation has not only continued but intensified.” Riley does not consider himself to “be in such distinguished company,” and yet has “earn[ed] the ire of the campus left” — his views enough to get him disinvited from Virginia Tech.
The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) has compiled 286 incidents of speakers who have been disinvited from colleges since 2000. Riley notes that “a disinvitation at some point may have been inevitable.”
Riley’s writings on race were enough “spark protests,” according a department head and other faculty members at Virginia Tech fearful of a reaction. And yet the fears were merely speculation, as National Review pointed out. The speech hadn’t been announced, making his disinvitation particularly notable.
Riley has received more speaking invitations as of late, which he credits to “the Obama presidency, high-profile police shootings, the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement and the national debate surrounding mass incarceration.” He’s also the author of Please Stop Helping Us: How Liberals Make It Harder for Blacks to Succeed.
When Riley spoke at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill last month, the College Republicans checked with liberal students “to make sure they wouldn’t be upset.”
Students have been able to tolerate Riley’s presence on campus before. Those “who disagree with my lectures don’t hesitate to speak out during the Q&A. The back-and-forth is spirited but civil, and I have never been shouted down or physically threatened,” he noted.
But the faculty at Virginia Tech undermine the ability of their students to hear other opinions, and claimed Riley was never invited. Riley tweeted “that’s a blatant lie.”
.@virginia_tech disinvited me to speak and now says I was never invited. Paper trail shows that’s a blatant lie. https://t.co/csaNUcCUtC
— Jason Riley (@jasonrileywsj) May 4, 2016
“If progressives aren’t already in absolute control of academia, they’re pretty close,” Riley wrote.
