Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III is set to make a speech at Georgetown University. The topic of that speech: free speech. The environment of the speech: anything but.
More than 130 students who had followed official channels to register for a seat in the auditorium were told they could attend, Lauren Phillips, a student at the school, wrote in an email Monday night. But the students were later suddenly uninvited because they were not part of a group that, Phillips believes, would ensure a sympathetic audience.
The attorney general of the United States, in a speech at a major university on the topic of “free speech,” is requiring a sympathetic audience scoured of any student who might object to anything he says. That’s despite the fact that in applying for these seats the students agreed not to disrupt Sessions’ speech. It’s a level of delicacy that makes snowflakes look like cast iron.
… students “find it extraordinarily hypocritical that AG Sessions would lecture future attorneys about the importance of free speech on campus while actively excluding the wider student body...”
It’s no coincidence that this comes at the same time that Donald Trump is actively attacking athletes who want to use their free expression to highlight racial inequality in the justice system. The Trump regime is attempting to redefine “free speech” as “speech that supports Trump.”
Just as any news that doesn’t support Trump has been slapped with a label of “fake news,” any speech that doesn’t support the Trump regime is being relabeled as “disrespect” for the nation.
Trump is encouraging hatred for those who voice an unapproved opinion. Meanwhile, Sessions is being protected from even a hint of disagreement.
Many people are critical of the idea of campuses giving students “safe spaces” and “trigger warnings” to protect them from ideas that they find offensive or upsetting.
“Holding an event that creates a safe space for the attorney general — and such a safe space that you don’t even invite people who commit to not disrupt the event while it’s ongoing — demonstrates a certain amount of hypocrisy,” said Heidi Li Feldman, a professor at the law school who said she had been denied permission to attend.
The term “snowflake” has been tossed around over the last few years with increasing frequency and often with casual disregard to actual threats and difficult circumstances. But Jefferson Sessions is a public official making a public presentation on the topic of “free speech.” Refusing to allow anyone into the hall who disagrees with Sessions, even if that person agrees not to interrupt, so defines the idea of a “snowflake” that it can serve as a reference from here on out.
Just raise Sessions’ shirt to the rafters and retire the term. It’s not “snowflakes” that wilt at the first skeptical glance. It’s “Sessions.”