NYU Community Responds to Alt-Right Speaker
Milo Yiannopoulos is an anti-Semite who encourages people to gun down journalists, but NYU administration says he’s welcome on campus.
The week after a white supremacist murdered 11 Jews in Pittsburgh and a far-right Florida man mailed bombs to politicians and media outlets, a man with a history of anti-Semitism and encouraging violence is set to speak at NYU on Halloween.
Milo Yiannopoulos, who was invited to speak by NYU’s self-proclaimed “deplorable professor” Michael Rectenwald, worked with white nationalists and neo-Nazis to publish favorable stories while he was an editor at Breitbart. After leaving Breitbart and losing a book deal for comments defending pedophilia, Yiannopoulos “trolled” Jewish journalist Talia Lavin by sending her $14.88, shorthand for the white supremacist “14 words” mantra and the Nazi salute. He has also been filmed singing karaoke alongside white supremacist Richard Spencer as Spencer makes the Nazi salute.
Yiannopoulos will be addressing a class of Rectenwald’s students at NYU’s School of Liberal Studies. In a statement sent students in the Global Liberal Studies and LS Core programs (with the simple subject “Classroom visit”), Dean Julie Mostov supports Rectenwald’s choice, but adds that “Students who choose not to attend the class will not be penalized in any way.” Her statement, read in full below, echoes the University’s official statement.
The Liberal Studies Student Council, which represents the interests of that school’s student body, told NYU Local that Yiannopoulos’s ideas are “despicable,” but that “NYU has to allow for academic discussion.” Here’s their statement in full:
By contrast, a letter posted on the NYU Jewish Voice for Peace Facebook page and signed by a variety of student groups demands that NYU cancel Yiannopoulos’s appearance. Their full statement:
Signatories also included NYU Divest, the Omnicron Chapter of Phi Iota Alpha, International Socialist Organization at NYU, Bella Quisqueya at NYU, NYU Asian American Political Activism Coalition, and Workmen’s Circle at NYU.
Others have called for students to report Rectenwald to NYU’s bias hotline. Patrick McCarron, whose profile lists him as a French student at NYU, has circulated the following message on Facebook:
In addition to anti-Semitic remarks, Yiannopoulos has encouraged violence against journalists and politicians. Following last week’s series of mail bombs, Yiannopoulos posted on Instagram, “just catching up with news of all these pipe bombs. disgusting and sad (that they didn’t go off, and the daily beast didn’t get one).” In June, when a reporter from the Observer asked Yiannopoulos for comment on a story, Yiannopoulos replied, “I can’t wait for the vigilante squads to start gunning journalists down on sight.”
When Local asked NYU spokesperson John Beckman for comment on Yiannopoulos’s upcoming appearance, Beckman stated, “if a faculty member invites a speaker to his or her class… the assumption is that — barring insurmountable issues of public safety or disruption — the speaker will be able to appear in class and be heard.”
Apparently threatening Jews with Nazi imagery and encouraging vigilantes to murder journalists doesn’t count as an “insurmountable issue of public safety.”
Rectenwald has similarly made a name for himself as a right-wing troll. Back in January, Rectenwald sued several other NYU faculty members including Chapo Trap House host Amber A’lee Frost for allegedly bullying him at work because of his “anti-PC” views.
He also made fun of Christine Blasey Ford during her Senate testimony…
…and spread anti-Semitic conspiracy theories about George Soros.
Rectenwald told Newsweek that Yiannopoulos was “uniquely poised to address issues related to a class segment on cultural exchange, which issues are nicely brought into play with Halloween.” But Yiannopoulos’s contributions to “cultural exchange” consist mostly of making sexist, racist, anti-Semitic, and pro-pedophilia remarks in the hope of “triggering the libs.”
