Students should be courageous and speak out about abuses of free speech on campus when college administrators discriminate against political and religious groups, a prominent conservative activist said Tuesday.
Mike Adams, who delivered the lecture to an audience consisting mainly of conservative students, spoke at an event co-sponsored by the University College Republicans and the Young America’s Foundation. The YAF is a national group dedicated to the conservative movement among students.
Adams, a criminology professor at the University of North Carolina Wilmington and a columnist for Townhall.com, spoke to about 75 audience members in Lillis 182. Adams, who advocates for reform of university policies by first publicly embarrassing and then suing them, urged students to be courageous and fight what they see as injustices on campus.
“For every brave individual, there are about five to six cowards in this country,” he said.
Adams expressed fear that because of the forced attempt for diversity on campuses, “we have very little actual debate on college campuses,” and people become blind to violations and double standards.
Adams said the UNCG College Republicans invited him to speak at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, but when he arrived for the speech, the student group could not pay him because the administration claimed Adams was “politically subversive” and even refused to fund the group.
Adams later discovered that the university’s Office of Student Life had paid $1,500 for a porn star to speak a few days before, he said.
“They think a porn star is less offensive than a Republican,” Adams said.
He said the porn star had actually sold lube at the speech.
The College Republicans then proposed to have a week dedicated to morals, attempting to complement the gay pride week that was already happening on campus. They eventually won a court case allowing them to do that with the help of Adams’ research.
Adams talked about how he recently received an e-mail from a UO student who strongly disagreed with content in the March issue of The Insurgent that many Christians found offensive. Adams said the student could not believe the publications received mandatory student fees, and the student wanted the publication banned.
Adams, however, disagreed with the student because The Insurgent exercises freedom of speech on campus.
Though his own views lie in the religious right, Adams said, he enjoys a diversity of views and believes every student voice should be heard.
“You have to get over the human compulsion to censor ideas you disagree (with),” said Adams, who advised the audience that public humiliation works more effectively than censorship.
“Don’t censor,” he said. “Use their own words against them.”
Throughout the speech, Adams stressed the importance of taking action and crossing partisan lines on issues affecting everyone.
“Everything I am going to say to you is a complete waste of time if you don’t have the personal quality of courage,” he said.
University freshman Dani Edgel, who plans to switch her major from psychology to political science in part because of her involvement with the College Republicans, said she was so inspired by Adams that she’ll walk through campus all day with a huge smile on her face.
“There is hope for campus and I am so damn happy,” she said excitedly after the speech. “And I’m going to start standing up to my biased teachers.”
News reporter Nicholas Wilbur contributed to this report