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The New Guard

‘Keep Matt Walsh Off Our Campus’: Leftist Faculty and Students Urge Event Cancellation in Petition to SLU President

By

Julia Johnson

July 19, 2023

Campus leftists have taken aim at YAF’s upcoming Matt Walsh lecture, asking the administration to shut it down, according to a tip received through Young America’s Foundation’s Campus Bias Tipline.

Faculty and students at Saint Louis University’s School of Social Work penned an open letter and launched a change.org petition addressed to SLU President Fred Pestello along with other university leadership, urging them to cancel the upcoming Matt Walsh event on December 1. Among their reasoning, they cited “hate speech” and claimed that his words would instill fear in students.

“For women, racial minorities, and the LGBTQIA+ community, his words may instill further fear: fear of participating in the classroom with his supporters, fear of expressing identity at a school that supports these beliefs, and so much more,” the letter reads.

To support their opposition, they cited multiple Walsh tweets in which he reinforced his beliefs on feminism, transgenderism, and marriage, among other things. All of the views espoused by Walsh are mainstream in the Conservative Movement.

They further took issue with the school’s vetting procedure for speakers. “We would like to open a discussion about the university policy that allowed this lecture,” they wrote.

“We are not in support of ending civil discourse and the discussion of various points of view, rather we are in support of closing loopholes that create opportunities for hate speech.”

They closed by claiming that the request had nothing to do with politics, but instead a safety concern.

More than 1,200 leftists have signed the petition, leaving a trail of comments citing Walsh’s “hate speech” and lack of a uterus.

SLU has been making headlines for all the wrong reasons. This week YAF reported that the hosting organization, College Republicans, was issued a disciplinary warning for posting a video to social media in which they asked, “What is a woman?” Last week, YAF covered the vandalism of a pro-life display caught on tape at the school as well as a vitriolic rant from an enraged pro-abortion student, which was also filmed.

The purportedly Catholic university doesn’t seem to be upholding the tenets of its religion so well. Matt Walsh’s views on marriage, abortion, and gender are in line with the Catholic faith’s. Not to mention, he is a practicing Catholic himself. To request that Walsh’s remarks be canceled isn’t just un-American, it’s inherently anti-Catholic. As of now, Walsh will still be speaking at SLU on December 1.

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