When I woke up this morning, I was outraged to discover that $3,050 in Truman State University funds (taken from the non-optional “student activity fee” charged to all Truman students) was taken to hire one of the most prolific Islamophobes alive, Robert Spencer, to give a talk called “Exposed: The Truth About Radical Islam” despite his purported neo-Nazi ties and the fact that he has been banned from the United Kingdom for his radical agenda to defame Islam and spread hate and misinformation. This event is being funded by the University and hosted by the College Republicans and being held April 13th, 8:00pm in Violette Hall, Room 1000.

A quick google search of Robert Spencer reveals his “extremist profile” on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s website. They state that “As the director of the Jihad Watch blog and co-founder of Stop Islamization of America, Robert Spencer is one of America’s most prolific and vociferous anti-Muslim propagandists.” Continuing, they explain that Robert “insists, despite his lack of academic training in Islam, that the religion is inherently violent and that radical jihadists who commit acts of terror are simply following its dictates.” His writing was cited dozens of times in a manifesto written by the Norwegian terrorist Anders Breivik. Spencer was banned from the United Kingdom as an extremist in July 2013” (Southern Poverty Law Center).

So, despite the fact that the United Kingdom has banned this man from entering their country because his views on Islam are incorrect and hateful, Truman State has not only invited, but is PAYING him to come our campus, using thousands of dollars in University funding. The FAC (Funds Allotment Council) has public records which prove that this funding was in fact, provided to the College Republican club to host this event. Those records can be found here: https://fac.truman.edu/slates/ under Spring 2017.

While outraged students have been writing letters to school administration and planning ways to stage nonviolent and peaceful protest at the event, which is scheduled for April 13th, 2017 at 8pm, online threats have recently surfaced advocating for the shooting, lobotomization, imprisonment and expulsion of students who disagree with Spencer or plan to protest. Attached below is an image of one such comment, however, it is just one of many. The rest can be seen on Robert Spencer’s personal website, here: https://www.jihadwatch.org/2017/04/truman-state-university-student-calls-for-violence-ahead-of-robert-spencer-lecture.

Many of these comments are also incredibly transphobic. Several Truman students are calling the event “tone-deaf” especially given the ongoing mental health crisis being experienced at Truman’s campus, with our current suicide rate 6.25x that of the national average at other Universities. A Truman student committed suicide just last week and with such a fragile and stressful campus environment at present, the last thing our University needs is additional stressors and events which incite violence, stress, and promote hate.

Furthermore, following Trump’s Muslim travel ban, University President Dr. Sue Thomas sent out an email ensuring that minority students would be protected and supported, yet by allowing and funding anti-Islamic speakers like Robert Spencer, they are doing precisely the opposite. Truman claims to promote an atmosphere in which diversity is respected and students of every creed, color, religion and culture can feel protected and safe. But their actions (and lack thereof) demonstrate otherwise.

While College Republicans and campus leadership (including University President Dr. Sue Thomas) argue that Spencer’s talk on campus falls under free speech, student Breanna Rigger stated in a public Facebook status,

“Look, it’s unethical to give fascists a platform. It’s not intolerant or hypocritical to deny them speech on campus. These people manipulate others with fear to support horrible policies and discrimination towards others. This fear can lead to violence towards targeted groups. If you use your first amendment rights to spread fears, lies, and violence then you shouldn’t have a platform.”

Furthermore, Robert’s rhetoric and platform has been characterized as “hate-speech” in the past which many feel should not fall under the definition of “free speech.” Furthermore, such speech is not appropriate on a campus that has falsely promised to stand up for minority students and help them feel safe and protected.

As a student who is personally concerned, I have reported the shooting threats to the proper authorities and expressed my concerns regarding the inappropriate nature of spending student activity fee money on hate speech, yet Truman State refuses to take action, telling students that this will promote “academic discourse.”

If the event is not canceled despite violent threats towards peaceful protesters and students who disagree with Spencer’s extremist, bigoted stance, there will be nonviolent protests staged by students who are standing in solidarity with our fellow Muslim brothers and sisters.

By continuing to host this event, despite an outpouring of outrage from the student body, Truman State is alienating and actively oppressing their Muslim student body. I would urge any Truman alumni to immediately call Truman and ask to be taken off donor lists and any high schoolers considering attending Truman State to keep the actions of the University at this time in mind.

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It’s hard to decide whether WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is a hero or a criminal. What’s much clearer is that we live in an era in which we get far too much junk information about celebrities, scandals and unfounded, unscientific notions about things like Mayan end-of-the-world prophecies, and not nearly enough real information about what governments are doing.

People who abhor WikiLeaks and Assange have made it very difficult for that organization to operate, by cutting off its main funding mechanisms. In December 2010, under pressure from some members of Congress, Visa, MasterCard and Pay Pal announced that they would no longer accept transactions for WikiLeaks. Those donations represented an estimated 95 percent of WikiLeaks’ funding. Then, according to the New York Times, WikiLeaks “suspended publication of documents because of financial distress, which it said was a result of what it called ‘a banking blockade.’”

Now, a new non-profit group advocating more transparent government has entered the picture. Launched in December 2012, the Freedom of the Press Foundation says that it plans to act as a conduit for donations to organizations like WikiLeaks. The foundation’s board of directors includes Daniel Ellsberg, a hero of the freedom-of-information world for his actions in the 1970s in leaking the Pentagon Papers, which exposed U.S. policy in Viet Nam.

The foundation’s website outlines it purpose this way:

The Freedom of the Press Foundation is dedicated to helping promote and fund aggressive, public-interest journalism focused on exposing mismanagement, corruption, and law-breaking in government. We accept tax-deductible donations to a variety of journalism organizations that push for government transparency and accountability.

The Freedom of the Press Foundation is built on the recognition that this kind of transparency journalism — from publishing the Pentagon Papers and exposing Watergate, to uncovering the NSA’s warrantless wiretapping program and CIA secret prisons — doesn’t just happen. It requires dogged work by journalists, and often, the courage of whistleblowers and others who work to ensure that the public actually learns what it has a right to know.

But in a changing economic and technological age, media organizations are increasingly susceptible to corporate or government pressure. This can lead to watered-down or compromised coverage, or worse: censorship.

Wikileaks will benefit from the new foundation, but so will other groups. So, if you’re not sure that WikiLeaks is a great idea, but you agree that we need more—not less—information about what government is doing, take heart: The Freedom of the Press Foundation will also be taking contributions for:

MuckRock News, which serves as a proxy and a guide for people seeking to make Freedom of Information requests;

The UpTake, a citizen journalism site that generates online video news;

The National Security Archive, a repository of declassified government documents.

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Can your homeowners’ association or subdivision board prevent you from planting a political sign in your front yard? That’s a question that comes up just about every time there’s an election, and 2012 is no exception.

This week, in exurban Wentzville, Missouri, homeowner Don Prinster had to settle for taping his favorite candidate’s sign in his front window, because his subdivision prohibits political yard signs.

Is that okay? It’s a tricky question: Is political expression an over-arching right guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution, or are yard signs nuisances and clutter that can be regulated by local subdivision associations as a way of keeping up the neighborhood?

At least one local legislator—state representative Kurt Bahr, a Republican from nearby O’Fallon, Missouri—thinks freedom of speech trumps everything. And he’s proposing a bill that would prevent homeowners’ associations from enforcing or adopting bans on political signs.

According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, similar laws are already in effect in 10 other states. [Of course, it’s hard to know whether laws banning bans are motivated by a deep belief in the Constitution and its guarantee of freedom of expression or by politicians’ needs to get their yard signs out there. But that’s commentary, and I’ll get to more of that later.]

Historical note: Missouri has had a headline-grabbing role in this issue. In 1990, Margaret Gilleo, a homeowner in upscale Ladue, Missouri placed a sign in her front yard to protest the Persian Gulf War. Her action violated Ladue’s ban on all residential political signs. She took her case to court, and in 1994, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the ban. But that 1994 ruling pertained only to a city law, not to rules for a privately run subdivision. And that issue remains unsettled, as Don Prinster recently learned.

In the St. Louis Post-Dispatch front-page story about this issue, one member of Prinster’s subdivision board voiced his opposition to a law banning bans on yard signs, saying he doesn’t like it “when big government comes in.”

That’s an intriguing statement on several levels. [Here’s the commentary portion of our program.]  First, he doesn’t like “big government.” In this case, that means the state of Missouri. In the political parlance of 2012, especially that of Republican candidates, “big government” usually refers to the Federal government. Most of the Republican candidates are hell-bent on focusing power in the states, so that “big government” label would seem to fall outside of current Republican dogma. But, okay: that subdivision guy—and I have no factual information as to what his political leanings are—just doesn’t like people bossing him around, and it doesn’t matter where they get their authority.  I get it.

But what makes his statement even more illogical is that he thinks that subdivision “government” is just fine. As a board member, he’s part of something you might call a private, “micro-government.” As a subdivision trustee, he thinks it’s his job to enforce the rules set forth in the subdivision documents—rules initially formulated by a private developer, and possibly amended by members of the homeowners’ association—whether or not they conform to the U.S. Constitution.

The logic is hard to follow. It reminds me of the argument against healthcare reform: People who want “Obamacare” repealed are against big government “interfering” in a person’s healthcare decisions. [The Affordable Care Act doesn’t do that, for the record.] But they don’t realize that, in America’s largely unregulated, privatized healthcare system, healthcare is “governed” by insurance companies who do, in fact, “interfere” with healthcare by denying coverage, steering patients to in-network doctors and hospitals, dropping members when they become sick, and excluding people with pre-existing conditions.  It’s the difference between the federal government protecting your rights, versus a private, for-profit organization deciding what rights you have.

It’s surprising, too, that someone who doesn’t like government would say, “What you do in your yard doesn’t just affect you,” as the subdivision trustee is quoted as saying in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Based on his comment about big-government, I would have expected him to be an individual-liberty and property-rights defender. Instead, he’s demonstrating a sense of community and respect for the common good.  He may be inconsistent, but to me, that’s a hopeful sign. [Pun intended.]

Hey, no one ever said that these issues were simple.

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