BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — For the second time in two weeks, liberal students at an Alabama college are protesting a conservative speaker delivering remarks on their campus.
Conservative author and filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza, is slated to speak at BSC on Thursday, April 7, as part of the William M. Acker Jr. Visiting Lecture program and Birmingham Southern College students have launched a petition protesting that very speech. His guest lecture has been met with protests from both students an faculty.
The petition currently has 170 signatures and decries D’Souza as a man with an “extensive history of controversial statements and instances of insensitivity.” The protestors believe “that he will only debase the vital dialogue within our community that is necessary for learning. Mr. D’Souza’s use of hateful rhetoric will also demean and degrade vital shareholders within our community.”
Di’Souza is an Indian-American conservative political commentator and author. He has worked for various conservative organizations such as the American Enterprise Institute, the Heritage Foundation, the Hoover Institution, and Policy Review.
In 2012, D’Souza released 2016: Obama’s America, a documentary film based on his 2010 book The Roots of Obama’s Rage. The film was the highest-grossing conservative documentary film produced in the United States.
His BSC lecture will be titled, “What’s So Great About America?”
Liberal students joining together to try to ban conservative speakers has become something of a pattern in recent years.
Most recently, a group at the University of Alabama-Huntsville has protested the university’s choice for commencement speaker this spring, but their attempts to force the university to make a change are being rebuffed.
After hearing that U.S. Senator Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) had been tapped to deliver the commencement speech at UAH’s graduation ceremony in May, some students submitted a petition asking school officials to replace him.
The petition mainly cites Sessions’ conservative policy positions and ties to Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump as the students’ reasons for why he should be removed from the program.
The petition against Senator Sessions has over 300 signatures, but UAH leaders are not considering making a change.
After several schools created “safe spaces” where only certain types of students could come and be “protected” from students with different perspectives, even President Barack Obama felt compelled to chastise liberal students for being closed minded.
“I’ve heard of some college campuses where they don’t want to have a guest speaker who is too conservative…” Obama said. “And I’ve got to tell you, I don’t agree with that… I don’t agree that you, when you become students at colleges, have to be coddled and protected from different points of view… Anybody who comes to speak to you that you disagree with, you should have an argument with them. But you shouldn’t silence them by telling them, ‘You can’t come because I’m too sensitive to hear what you have to say.’ That’s not the way we learn.”
D’Souza has not released an official comment on the issue, but he did take a jab on twitter. “I notice conservatives never try to ban liberal speakers on campus,” he wrote on Saturday. “We must be the tolerant ones.”
(h/t Weld For Birmingham)
