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Campus Free Speech

Columbia U. Students Tear Down Posters Advertising Christina Hoff Sommers Visit

Only one poster survived for a full 24 hours.

Robby Soave | 10.22.2016 1:45 PM

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Large image on homepages | AEI
(AEI)

Individualist-feminist author Christina Hoff Sommers is giving a talk at Columbia University, but some students don't want anyone to know about it.

Posters advertising Sommers' visit were torn down in buildings across campus, according to Toni Airaksinen, a reporter for Campus Reform and student at Columbia-affiliated Barnard College. Airaksinen wrote on Twitter that only one of about 20 posters survived for a full day.

All across campus, in all diff buildings, posters for @CHSommers visit to @Columbia on Nov 1st have been ripped down: pic.twitter.com/8BcvlvG5Hl

— Toni Airaksinen (@Toni_Airaksinen) October 21, 2016

Update: one single @CHSommers flyer out of ~20 has stood the test of 24 hours in the student center. There were 2 left just 15 min ago. pic.twitter.com/LJGPcRZwuU

— Toni Airaksinen (@Toni_Airaksinen) October 21, 2016

Look, if students really don't want to listen to Sommers, they are under no obligation to attend her talk. But other students might appreciate the chance to hear from someone who represents a perspective they are unlikely to learn about in class.

And if Columbia's leftist-students are so afraid of alternative perspectives, they can't have very much confidence in the persuasiveness of their own beliefs.

Sommers' talk, "Victims, Victims Everywhere," is at 7:00 p.m. on November 1.

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NEXT: What Has Government Done for Lower-Income, Working Americans? Screwed Them, Mostly.

Robby Soave is a senior editor at Reason.

Campus Free Speech
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