The University of Florida is allowing Richard Spencer to speak because it has to
White supremacist Richard Spencer is scheduled to speak this Thursday (Oct. 19) afternoon on the University of Florida’s (UF) Gainesville campus. The National Policy Institute, the white supremacist think tank Spencer leads, initially sought to rent space on the UF campus on Sept. 12, shortly after the Charlottesville attack, but the request was denied on the basis that unrest similar to what had just happened in Virginia might also occur in Gainesville, threatening public safety there.
A few weeks later, however, UF had to capitulate: As the universityexplained in a Q&A published on its site, as a state institution, UF is not allowed to limit free speech—even when it is hate speech—and so had no choice but to rent space out for Spencer’s talk, or be in violation of the law.
Spencer is a highly controversial figure, and his prominence within the far right is possibly higher now than ever. On Oct. 7, he returned to Charlottesville to lead a white-nationalist march through the University of Virginia campus where the September incidents (which included the murder of a woman who was counter-protesting the white nationalists) occurred.
via:https://qz.com/1103619/the-university-of-florida-is-allowing-richard-spencer-to-speak-because-it-has-to/
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