Linfield College administrators have forced a Young Americans for Liberty group to cancel a free speech event over a cartoon frog. <\/p>\n
Staff at the university labeled participants white supremacists after one of them drew a picture of Pepe the Frog, the popular meme thats been unfairly maligned as a hate symbol by Hillary Clinton and her supporters in the mainstream media. <\/p>\n
The libertarian group set up a table on campus to promote their organization, and planned to sponsor a series of free speech events planned at college, which is in Oregon. <\/p>\n
According to Reason, Kiefer Smith, vice president of the chapter, brought an inflatable free speech ball for participants to write and draw pictures on. <\/p>\n
The majority of the things written on there were uplifting things, not political, not inflammatory at all, he said. <\/p>\n
Typical examples were said to include youre awesome and have a nice day. <\/p>\n
When one participant drew Pepe, the group came under attack by other students on campus, and involved the administration in their complaints. <\/p>\n
Immediately we were deemed alt-right, said Smith, who says that YAL were even accused of being white supremacists over the drawing. <\/p>\n
Reason states that the Linfield Advisory Committee on Diversity responded to the drawing by inviting the group to a free speech forum, where they were supposed to hold an hour-long discussion on the freedom of expression, but the event turned into a four-hour condemnation of the group. <\/p>\n
Reshmi Dutt-Ballerstadt, a professor of English and gender studies coordinator accused the group of being funded by alt-right dark money. <\/p>\n
Following the forum, the school administration canceled the planned free speech events that YAL was sponsoring, including a talk hosted by University of Toronto psychologist Jordan Peterson on ethics and free speech. <\/p>\n
Peterson has come under fire from the progressive left for speaking out against the enforcement of gender-neutral preferred pronouns like ze\/hir and xe\/xir. <\/p>\n
The campus faculty, including Dean of Faculty Dawn Nowacki, took aim at YAL in the campus newspaper, where they falsely described the libertarians as alt-right. <\/p>\n
These efforts are a lot more subtle, wrote Nowacki. Just as becoming a terrorist is a gradual, step-by-step process, people do not become part of the alt-right overnight. These events represent a kind of soft recruitment into more extremist ideas. <\/p>\n
The Young Americans for Liberty went ahead with their free speech event at an off-campus site, where they received a turn-out of over 400 attendeesdouble the number they were expecting. <\/p>\n
The banned lecture also received around 90,000 views on YouTube. <\/p>\n
This colleges efforts to suppress free speech backfired spectacularly. <\/p>\n
Ian Miles Cheong is a journalist and outspoken media critic. You can reach him through social media at@stillgray on Twitterand onFacebook. <\/p>\n
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Pepe the Frog Drawing Forces Free Speech Event Cancellation at Linfield College - Heat Street<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Linfield College administrators have forced a Young Americans for Liberty group to cancel a free speech event over a cartoon frog. Staff at the university labeled participants white supremacists after one of them drew a picture of Pepe the Frog, the popular meme thats been unfairly maligned as a hate symbol by Hillary Clinton and her supporters in the mainstream media. The libertarian group set up a table on campus to promote their organization, and planned to sponsor a series of free speech events planned at college, which is in Oregon. Continue reading