Gavin McInnes Scheduled to Speak to NYU College Republicans

NYU College Republican’s invitation of conservative actor, comedian and Vice Media co-founder Gavin McInnes has created controversy on campus. The talk, scheduled for Thursday at 7PM, has sparked a counter-protest by NYU Anti-Fascists who wrote that NYU students should “come to Kimmel, Rosenthal Pavilion to let NYU know that we will not stand for bigotry, racism, homophobia, transphobia, misogyny on our campus” in the event description for “Tonight: Disrupt Gavin McInnes at NYU.”

The full event description reads:

Come to Kimmel, Rosenthal Pavilion to let NYU know that we will not stand for bigotry, racism, homophobia, transphobia, misogyny on our campus.

Gavin McInnes has a long track record of using incendiary language to attract media attention and frenzy. In 2014, McInnes published an article entitled Transphobia is Perfectly Normal — it refers to transwomen as “trannies” and “mentally ill people [who] mutilate themselves.” The backlash of the article was swift, and he was dismissed from his job at ad agency Rooster. Since then, he’s made a career out of similar pundit pieces, hosting a popular podcast and calling Jada Pinkett-Smith a “monkey actress.”

Most recently, in December 2016, Gavin McInnes launched an informal group called the Proud Boys, an “anti racial guilt,” anti-feminist organization. When NYC Antifa began to share information about members of the group with their employers (in many cases leading to job loss), McInnes urged the Proud Boys to attend an Antifa concert and “wreck the shit” of the “f*ggots.”

“The university frequently claims it is committed to diversity and student safety — in fact, it’s a major part of NYU’s ‘brand’ — but when it comes to enforcing these values, it again and again falls short,” a representative for the group said. “Tonight’s event with Gavin McInnes, directly in the wake of President Andrew Hamilton failing to name NYU a sanctuary campus, is just one egregious example of this.”

NYU College Republican President, Junior Elena Hatib, defended the club’s decision to host McInnes. “We invited him because one of our e-board members suggested that he’d come. Even though I don’t personally agree with everything he says, I think he brings up interesting conversation topics, especially for NYU and the current campus culture,” she wrote.

“Students need to recognize that our members don’t always agree with what he says or many of his views, but we believe it’s important to preserve free speech on campus,” she continued, adding that she feared there will no longer be any free speech at NYU unless “you belong to a specific ideology.”

“It’ll be interesting to hear his opinions on the recent election, the so called Culture War, and campus censorship. He’s also hilarious so he’s sure to be an entertaining speaker,” she continued. “… people need to know he’s also a comedian and you can’t take everything [he says] too seriously.”

Other College Republicans had similar sentiments. “We invited Gavin McInnes to speak because as the main right-wing student organization on campus, it is our role to provide students the opportunity to hear from prominent right-wingers face-to-face,” Xavier Malaussena, the NYU College Republican’s Vice President, said regarding the event. “Gavin McInnes has a long history of incendiary comments and positions, many of which our club’s officers and members do not agree with, but we did not believe these were disqualifying either.”

“He is a high profile conservative commentator, journalist, and comedian with a substantial fan base that knows not to take everything he says seriously, and we want to host well known speakers like him,” he said, echoing Hatib.

“We were all very concerned about his comments last weekend regarding Jada Pinkett Smith, which were beyond unacceptable,” he added, regarding McInnes reference to the African American actress. “He has since apologized for what was clearly an attempt at a joke gone very wrong. We do not believe that a man who spends his time raising his biracial children is racist, we believe he fucked up bad unintentionally; and we did not believe that this was worth shutting down a highly anticipated event for on such short notice.”

“They don’t like the speaker,” Stephen Polniaszek, NYU’s Assistant Director for Club Life, said over the phone regarding the phone calls and emails CSALS’s office has been receiving. “They all have the phrase ‘I support free speech but’… nobody believes in free speech anymore, apparently,” he added. Polniaszek confirmed that the event was going to take place as scheduled though

However, NYU Local has learned NYU College Republicans leadership is scheduled to meet with Polniaszek at 4PM. We will keep updating this story as more information becomes available.

Update: We have received word the event is still on.