Ben Shapiro presents himself as a misunderstood conservative, silenced by liberals for his politics and values. He is more than a conservative Harvard Law graduate. His rhetoric perpetuates white supremacy, racism, classism, transphobia, ableism and xenophobia. Shapiro has made it his intention to put people down and perpetuate harmful and false stereotypes. He poses a danger to the students at Syracuse University whose existence he fundamentally disagrees with.

Candidates for SU Student Association president and vice president Justine Hastings and Ryan Golden understand the danger of his potential appearance at SU and are the only campaign that has taken the necessary and immediate action by creating a resolution to condemn Shapiro’s appearance. More than 200 students have signed the resolution in just two days, making it one of the most authored resolutions in SA history. Hastings and Golden have emphasized the importance of having diverse critical inquiries and varying political perspectives on campus. However, their campaign adamantly believes that one can promote conservative values without violating the human dignity and safety of Syracuse’s students.

In their statement regarding their decision to condemn Shapiro, Hastings and Golden acknowledge that hate speech is legally protected as free speech. However, SU’s Code of Student Conduct emphasizes respect for one another and prohibits targeting any protected category, including but not limited to “race, color, creed, religion, sex, gender, national origin, citizenship, ethnicity, marital status, age, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity and gender expression, veteran status.”

This code does not apply to just students but student organizations as well. Although the SA Finance Board made an unbiased decision based solely on the College Republicans’ budget which adhered to SA’s finance code, and Hastings and Golden have expressed that the Finance Board is not at fault, Ben Shapiro’s visit is not yet set in stone. All students should be respected by campus guests, and no guest who supports the marginalization of our student body should be invited.

It is not a dictatorship of ideas to hold student organizations responsible to the Code of Student Conduct, to call for democratically elected representatives in the SA to decide whether a divisive speaker is harmful to the campus community and to refuse to fund the event.

Furthermore, it is extremely unjust to fund such a hateful and discriminatory speaker when all students would be paying for this event through their student activity fees. This criterion is one that Hastings and Golden would hold against any student organization requesting funding for a speaker or guest.

Shapiro may couch his ideas behind “objectivity and candor” and in “defense of individual rights,” but he leverages more palatable critiques of contemporary social justice movements as a stepping stone to the Identitarian, Western chauvinist ideas of the contemporary far right.

Shapiro’s cultivated image of respectability belies his fascistic ideas, and his claims to legal protection under the first amendment belie a vitriolic hatred of people different from him. Although he may be entitled to protected speech, the decision to provide him a platform, not to mention patronage, is grotesque.

Shapiro’s mantra of “facts over feelings” denies the fact that the personal is political. This is more than a difference in opinion. It’s about having a speaker on campus whose “difference of opinion” denies the rightful existence of minorities and marginalized peoples. He does not respect transgender people, referring to them as their “dead” names and using pronouns that don’t align with their gender identity. Shapiro believes that being transgender or homosexual is a mental illness.

Hastings and Golden are the only candidates to condemn his abhorrent speech and his potential visit to SU this fall. Their campaign shows true leadership in supporting the right of all students to live authentically and have their identities respected by any speaker invited by a student organization.

 

Taylor Krzéminski

Remembrance Scholar

President of Students United for Body Acceptance

Resident Advisor

Mentor RA for BBB

 

Published on April 9, 2020 at 10:44 pm