Free speech, campus safety collide in USC's cancellation of valedictorian speech

Five months ago, USC cited safety as a rationale for banning economics professor John Strauss, who is Jewish, from campus after student activists said they felt threatened when he approached them at a protest and said “Hamas are murderers. ... I hope they all are killed.” “Our north star is protecting the safety of our community,” a USC spokesperson said at the time. Now the university is again citing safety concerns for canceling a Muslim valedictorian’s speech at its May commencement ceremony.

“Why is the burden of a potential threat placed on the shoulders of the valedictorian rather than those who would disrupt her?” Dunbar-Hester said USC's action — coming days before conservative legislators in Washington grilled the president of Columbia University — plays into the hands of “anti-intellectual reactionaries” who cynically sought to 'demonize campus communities that express solidarity with the Palestinian freedom struggle.

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