A conservative speaker announces they’re headed to a college campus, leftist students riot, then campus administrators cave and block the speaker from appearing on campus. Repeat.
This has sadly become an all-too-familiar scenario for students who want to bring ideological diversity to their campuses.
The pervasiveness of “safe-space” culture on college campuses has jeopardized the very idea of objective truth and is creating a generation of young people who can’t handle facts that don’t align with their feelings. Young America’s Foundation is no stranger to battling campus leftists and university administrators who want to prevent students from being exposed to the truth for fear it might “trigger” them. To highlight the growing threat to free thinking—and the lunacy of the Left—on America’s campuses today, we’ve compiled a list of quotes from our brand-new video series, #TruthStraightUp, that features no-frills hard truths from leading conservative voices on the most important issues of today—from abortion, to biology, to radical Islam, and more—that just might get you banned if you dare utter them on many college campuses today.
1. “To pretend that a man is a woman if he believes he is a woman…[is] objectively untrue.” –Ben Shapiro
From the now-famous run-in with UC Berkeley in 2017 that resulted in a lawsuit from Young America’s Foundation (which we won) to just last month when Grand Canyon University administrators attempted to prevent him from speaking, Ben Shapiro is no stranger to being blocked from campuses. Add in challenging the Left’s latest sacred cow of gender identity and this quote from Ben Shapiro doesn’t stand a chance at many institutions of higher learning. If that sounds far-fetched, just last year, according to a Fox News report, a student at Indiana University of Pennsylvania was kicked out of a Christianity class for daring to state that “the official view of biologists is that are only two genders.” The professor couldn’t handle hearing the truth straight up and not only kicked the student out of class, but referred him to the university’s Academic Integrity Board, putting him in jeopardy of not graduating. The future of this country is in serious trouble if this is how educators are responding to basic biology.
2. “Feminism has sucked all the joy out of [femininity]” –Andrew Klavan
Women’s centers on college campuses have successfully brainwashed the average American college student into believing the radical progressive feminist’s view of women is the truth. Deviate from today’s politically-correct narrative of “female empowerment” and you’re sure to be met with at best a riot and at worst an outright ban from campus. Just last year, Christina Hoff Sommers—otherwise known as “The Factual Feminist” and a prolific YAF speaker—was not allowed to complete a talk at Lewis & Clark College due to sustained periods of interruption from radical protestors throughout her lecture. Sommers’ offenses? Debunking the wage gap, pointing out that modern feminism hurts men and boys, and questioning the validity of the alleged prevalence of “rape culture” on college campuses today. The angry, supposedly-woke feminist mobs that run rampant at American colleges and universities today certainly prove Mr. Klavan’s point—a thought sure to elicit the ire of leftist women on any campus.
3. “Life is the most fundamental right. None of the other rights listed in the Bill of Rights actually exist without first the right to life.” –Allie Stuckey
Social justice warriors (SJWs) claim to be soldiers on the front lines protecting the most innocent among us from what they see as oppression by the rich, privileged, and powerful—except when it comes to protecting the lives of innocent children. The radical feminist idol of abortion has become a core tenet of college progressives and, contrary to logic, if Allie Stuckey comes to campus to show her support for protecting the lives of the unborn, she won’t be welcomed as a defender of the innocent but will be shunned and scorned as an oppressor of women. Just this past fall at Ohio State University, Planned Parenthood kicked pro-life students out of a public event claiming they were a “security threat.” On too many campuses, opposing someone’s viewpoint is ok only if you’re a liberal protesting a conservative and not the other way around.
4. “Free markets fundamentally run on service—not to make everyone’s outcomes equal.” –Brian Brenberg
With the rise of leftist leaders who favor socialism over free markets, it’s no surprise campus leftists have bought into the phony promises of socialist utopias and act to demonize business leaders, entrepreneurs, and the very institution that’s lifted millions out of poverty. Rather than equality of opportunity, the Left has decided equality of outcome should be sought out, no matter the cost. At Georgia’s Kennesaw State University, a professor attacked American soldiers as “gangsters in service to capitalism.” YAF’s annual Comedy & Tragedy Report on the courses being taught at leading colleges and universities, dozens of courses teach the rising generation that the free market is built upon racism and misogyny to benefit only the privileged at the expense of the marginalized. Anyone who dares to defend the power of the free market or point to the deadly consequences of socialism is sure to face the wrath of the intolerant Left.
Spencer Brown is the spokesman for Young America’s Foundation, the premier organization for equipping and empowering conservative students on college campuses. #TruthStraightUp is a video project of Young America’s Foundation featuring 60 second videos presenting nothing but the facts from leading conservative influencers.
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