Campus Liberals are at it again—this time at University of California, Santa Barbara.
The Associated Students Finance Board at UCSB has denied a conservative club campus funding for security for author David Horowitz citing that Mr. Horowitz was“controversial” and that approving funding would be “an inappropriate use of student funds.”
Ahmed Naguib, a member of the Finance Board and the Muslim Students Association (MSA), said that “I agree that people have the right to freedom of speech, but I don’t believe he has that right if it’s threatening students’ safety. He made several racist remarks about Arabs and accused people of terrorism last time he visited.” (Full article about the decision can be read here.)
Conservative activist and club vice president Matt Borasi emailed the following statement when asked about the Associated Students Finance Board’s decision:
“Associated Student's Finance Board decided not to approve the funding request for security due to the fact that Horowitz is a controversial speaker. Members of the MSA (Muslim Students Association) are voting members on the board and based their decision on the feeling that Horowitz's remarks about the MSA offended many in the student-run organization and made others feel threatened in a prior speaking engagement at UCSB. This argument has little ground considering the Horowitz has never made a personal threat or directed harmful threats towards MSA, but rather the opposite and exposed many of the hidden truths about the organization.
We are taking the Finance's Board's decision to the Associated Student Legislative Council with the request that they overrule the Finance's Board's decision. We are reaching out to other organizations to gather support against this biased ruling. We still plan to bring David Horowitz to speak at UCSB later this month. It was, and still is the intention of our club not to avoid the Associated Student Government, but rather give them an opportunity to overcome reputation of being politically left by helping us bring a conservative speaker to campus. This ruling by the Finance Board just reaffirms their reputation to block attempts to provide alternate perspectives to the community and students on campus, who are and continue to be proselytized by the liberal pronouncements in the classroom and on campus."
During his last appearance at UCSB in May of 2008, Horowitz addressed a capacity crowd discussing the threat of radical Islam and challenged the MSA to denounce Hamas and Hezbollah as terrorist organizations—they did not.
In 2010, when the conservative club brought Karl Rove to campus, questions also arose about the“controversial” nature of the speaker. Financial demands were made by the school for security. Eventually a compromise was met but the event was delayed for months.
Will the Associated Student Legislative Council overrule the Finance Board or will they uphold their admittedly anti-free speech decision? Stay tuned.
