Despite higher education portraying itself as a marketplace of ideas, university administrators continue to allow the far-left to dictate what ideologies are represented on campuses nationwide. Protesters often resort to any tactic necessary, including violence or outright slander, to bar speakers with opposing viewpoints. In recent years, these ideological gatekeepers have mainly targeted mainstream personalities like Ann Coulter and Ben Shapiro, but they are now expanding their censorship crusade to former immigration officials.
The left-wing public interest group Restore Public Trust (RPT) launched a campaign last week with more than 40 organizations, including the disgraced Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), to ban certain current and former government officials from attaining academic employment. In an open letter to university presidents and in paid newspaper advertisements, they targeted anyone involved in President Trump’s “zero tolerance” policy at the border last year.
“Disgraced former officials should not be offered cushy fellowships to rehabilitate their image or be given space to explain to students why they were only ‘doing their jobs,’” stated the organization’s spokesman Karl Frisch.
This campaign is not just a blacklisting of government officials, but a blackout of an entire platform. It’s a blatant attempt to censor an opposing viewpoint. And regardless of what anyone thinks of the “zero tolerance” policy, the idea of banning speech is fatally flawed as it leads to a misinformed public.
If a majority of the professors and speakers at universities support open borders, then that is the only side students will see. Several studies provide evidence that a majority of professors are politically aligned with groups like RPT and SPLC, and that is a monopoly the open-borders lobby will not give up without a fight. Slamming the door on former government officials with an actual understanding of immigration policy and the real-world consequences of open borders prevents an honest debate of the issue.
This campaign is not about who gets a job on college campuses. It’s about whose voice is heard. If the goal of universities is truly to educate their pupils to the fullest extent, students are owed the opportunity to learn from the best and brightest out there. That can’t happen if higher education caves to this campaign’s illiberal idea of censorship.
