Posters for a firing line debate on biological sex were ripped and crumpled by student demonstrators. Others were covered with mock posters, one reading, “Come get your genitals inspected.”
Raleigh Adams
Assistant Editor of Campus Life & Administration, The Buckley Beacon
On Wednesday afternoon, student demonstrators in William L. Harkness Hall vandalized and destroyed posters advertising a firing line debate hosted by the Buckley Institute, witnesses tell The Buckley Beacon.
The debate between Michael Ulrich, Associate Professor of Health, Law, Ethics, and Human Rights at Boston University, and Ryan T. Anderson, president of the conservative-leaning Ethics and Public Policy Center, or EPPC, centered on the question, “Should the Law Only Recognize Biological Sex?” This was the third firing line debate hosted by Buckley this academic year.
One flyer mocking the event read, “Come get your genitals inspected,” with a photo of EPPC president Anderson attached. The EPPC is a DC-based think tank that specializes in the application of the Judeo-Christian theological tradition to cultural, legal, and social politics in the United States. Anderson, formerly a scholar at the Heritage Foundation, is an outspoken critic of legal same-sex marriage and transgender rights.
The same flyer also asked, “Are you compliant?” A message written directly onto the flyer, seemingly in response, read, “No, but I bet your mom was when we inspected each other’s genitals last night.”
A separate flyer read, “Did you enjoy this debate? Join us next week for our debate on: Should homosexuals exist, or must they perish.” The fake flyer also advertised “special guest” Fred Waldron Phelps Sr., an American minister and ex-lawyer who passed away in 2014 and was notorious for his opposition to homosexuality. The flyer included a photo of Phelps holding a sign with an anti-gay slur.
Students were also seen crumpling and ripping posters in the classroom facility.
Wednesday’s events are among several recent spikes in vandalism on college campuses, led primarily by far-left students and student activist groups. Just yesterday, the administration at the College of Sequoias, a two-year institution in central California, became the target of legal action by Young America’s Foundation after they removed sidewalk chalk messages written by conservative students that read, “God bless America.” Two days earlier, pro-Palestine students at the University of Michigan spray-painted the home of the school’s provost.
Asked for his reaction to Wednesday’s vandalism at Yale, Anderson told The Beacon, “It’s a sad commentary on the state of higher education, but it’s to be expected.” Anderson cited his own time at Princeton in the early 2000s, expressing disappointment in supposed shifts in campus culture away from intellectual curiosity and free thinking.
“I don’t care, it makes no difference to me if some undergraduates deface a poster,” Anderson continued. “But it shows that the Buckley Institute’s more needed than ever.”
Ulrich, Anderson’s opponent in the firing line debate, concurred. “We need to be able to have open and honest conversations,” Ulrich told The Beacon. “I think it’s useful to reach out and speak to other people and get different viewpoints and perspectives on things.”
The Buckley Institute’s next firing line debate, the topic of which is, “America’s ruling class has failed,” will feature Newsweek editor Josh Hammer and Gregory Huber, Forst Family Professor of Political Science at Yale. It is currently scheduled for April 1.
*Editor’s correction: The article originally misstated that the Buckley Institute’s next firing line debate featuring Josh Hammer and Gregory Huber was scheduled for April 10, when it is scheduled for April 1.
hi! as your institute claims to support free speech, we were simply exercising our right to free speech (is free speech vandalism now?). we made sure not to take down your posters until ours were–shockingly–taken down.