Joe Scarnati is picking a classic “culture wars” fight.
Over the weekend, the Senate Pro Tempore called out Penn State University for extending a speaking invitation to Bill Ayers.
Ayers was the co-founder of the radical 1970’s group The Weather Underground. He was arrested in 1980 for his involvement in the group’s activities but the case was eventually dropped because of the government’s methods of infiltrating and investigating the organization.
Bill Ayers eventually became an influential figure in reforming education in Chicago in the 1990’s. In that role, he met a young aspiring politician named Barack Obama. Their relationship lead to a resurgence in attention towards Ayers during the 2008 presidential election.
“The decision to allow Mr. Ayers to address your students and faculty in light of his violent past is difficult for me to reconcile,” Scarnati wrote to PSU President Eric Barron.
The school defended the decision of student leaders to chose their speakers with their own funds.
“They are free to sponsor programs and speakers, however controversial, without censorship by the university,” said Penn State spokeswoman Lisa Powers. “Of course, the presence of any speaker cannot be taken as an endorsement by the university of his/her views.”
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11 Responses
Ok don’t denounce speech, but call it what he is, not simply anti war activist – but a criminal who has immersed himself into education of all places! A legal group at PSU invited him, and wonder if each member of the legal group can receipt and support each article of the U.S. Constitution.
Whoa, whoa, whoa, Upson, don’t conflate those characters with terrorists as Isaac attempts. Isaac is defending terroristic behavior by 1. rewriting history (“vandalized some properties”…LOL) and 2. suggesting that Scarnati and other republicans would endorse a right wing terrorist to speak. I think it’s pretty intellectually transparent, but par for the course for this troll.
He probably is still just smarting from me calling him and his ilk out regarding their latent racist behavior: https://www.politicspa.com/313-ups-downs/64440/#comments
First, this is a state school, supported by state funds, so of course it is valid to question it.
Second, I say let him talk – but I hope all of you dem apologists would feel the same way when and if Ann Coulter, Walter Williams, and/or Sarah Palin come to speak.
Scarnati and his fellow right wingers are all about freedom as long as they get to say what and who is free and when.
A student-run organization using independent funds arranged for an education expert to speak at a forum on education and the law? Shocking! What’s that about people in glass houses? Let’s talk about your past, Sen. Scarnati – such a good Roman Catholic, divorcing your wife, leaving her with three children, one of whom with special needs… and this happened within the last 10 years, not over 40 years ago.
Are you guys suggesting OBL has been hanging out with Elvis and Bigfoot? Or are you suggesting that a guy who recklessly vandalized some properties to protest a horrific war that killed over 1.3 million people back in the ’70s is somehow equivalent to a man who engineered the wholesale slaughter of thousands upon thousands of innocent people? Perhaps a better analogy would be the anti-abortion, radical right wing terrorist Eric Rudolph… except he actually managed to kill two people and injure 111, which is 113 more casualties than Ayers. Boy, the lunatic fringe is out and about.
I think OBL may have been booked already at Peggy’s private alma mater.
Wasn’t Osama Bin Laden available?
Question – is Joe Scarnati paying tuition for the students who will be attending Bill Ayers speech? I personally don’t think it’s any business of politicians to dictate who can and can not speak at ANY college.
Really Observer? This has nothing to do with the 1st Amendment. Maybe everyone you know cannot walk and chew gum, but I assure you that Joe can.
There’s nothing that makes kids want to know what a speaker has to say like telling they can’t hear it. All Scarnati has accomplished is to increase the crowd for Ayers.
There must be more important issues facing the Commonwealth than this…what a joke to waste oxygen “denouncing” the freedom of speech/expression/association and dampening the student body’s exercise of freedom of thought. This guy has clearly sold out to the lunatic right fringe. If this is a harbinger of things to come from our legislature, it will be a very long legislative session!