Defending Free Speech From Educrats and Black Lives Matter

The American Spectator

An outrage at Texas Southern only Gov. Abbott can repair.

TSU President Austin Lane

"The president of a state university here in Houston stormed into a classroom where a conservative state lawmaker was attempting to give a speech Monday and shut the event down.

"Now Gov. Greg Abbott needs to shut him down.

"No sensible person approves of this wave of anti-conservative censorship sweeping across campuses, but there’s often little that decent folks can do about it, short of filing lawsuits, as it’s usually taking place on especially leftist campuses. In Texas, though, we have no reason to tolerate this betrayal of first principles.

"Our governor’s office has little formal power, but one of the powers it does have is appointing university board members. Former Gov. Rick Perry knew how to leverage this authority to push for reform.

"Abbott knows his power, too, but the problem is that he has replaced Perry’s reform-minded conservative board members — at least at the University of Texas — with cronies more interested in preserving the status quo, from affirmative action to obscene Title IX policies to backdoor admissions practices that benefit themselves and their clique.

"I don’t know the people Abbott has appointed to the board of Texas Southern University, scene of this outrage, or if he is even interested in conducting the affairs of any board other than UT’s, but I do know he can use his influence to make it clear that censorship is utterly unacceptable at public universities in Texas.

"Those members of the board of this historically black college who actually believe in freedom, academic or otherwise, needn’t wait for Abbott’s prompting. The scene that took place Monday should never be repeated.

"State Rep. Briscoe Cain had been invited to give a talk to a student chapter of the Federalist Society on the recent special session of the state legislature.

"Students representing Black Lives Matter marched into the lecture hall at Texas Southern University and began shouting Cain down before his talk had even started, shamelessly accusing him of racism, Klan affiliation, and other invented nonsense." . . .