It doesn’t really look good when the administration lets Alveda King come to Saint Louis University to give a presentation that included likening homosexuality to a “culture of death” yet denies David Horowitz, another radical author, the ability to give his speech at a College Republicans assembly on the grounds that some of his views run counter to the Jesuit mission.
Even if he is better known for touting that Islam is inherently fascist (he notably declared the third week of October to be “Islamo-fascism” week, according to the National Review), SLU should be promoting dialogue, not censorship. Speakers, as long as they are accredited, should be allowed to speak to students, whether or not what they say or believe is politically correct.

Students don’t need to agree to hear a speech. Horowitz isn’t someone they found ranting over a brewski at Humphrey’s; he has written several books and spoken at more than 150 colleges and universities, including several fellow Jesuit institutions, according to his biography. Colombia University hosted Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, amid great uproar, and despite his many questionable-at-best policies and beliefs.
That said, Horowitz’s speech shouldn’t go without retaliation from the other side. The administration should necessitate the inclusion of an unbiased representation of Islamic history and theology in order to provide a counter-argument to any kind of anti-Islamic speech.

The entire concept behind having speakers come to college campuses is to give students access to a wide and often disparate set of opinions, to teach them to address controversy, and to let them figure out their own political opinions about the world. SLU should not be set on only bringing in speakers that fit the guidelines of the Jesuit mission-an ambiguous mission at that, given that they allowed more controversial speakers in the past, including King as well as Norman Finkelstein, a known Holocaust revisionist.

We see the administration’s point. They don’t want students to get hurt. However, such censorship feels more like the University administrators are worried about bad public relations more than they are worried about exposing students to defamation. Rather than banning those with radical opinions, the University should let them speak, as long as they balance the speech with a position from the opposite side. After all, no student has ever learned from silence.