New York’s Columbia University cancelled a panel that was due to feature Breitbart’s Allum Bokhari and Charlie Nash, and The Gateway Pundit’s Lucian Wintrich, following “security concerns.”
“The Gateway Pundit’s White House correspondent Lucian Wintrich, along with Breitbart writers Charles Nash and Allum Bokhari, were booked by a Columbia University student organization to give an open panel discussion on campus free speech set for Thursday, March 2nd,” reported The Gateway Pundit on Friday. “The student organization was also organizing to invite a liberal writer on the panel to debate Wintrich, Nash, and Bokhari.”
“Days before the event the University decided to cancel the event due to ‘security concerns’ when they discovered that the speakers were from The Gateway Pundit and Breitbart,” they continued. “After school administrators found out that after March 5th, Nash and Bokhari would be back in London and Wintrich is back in D.C., the administration said that Wintrich, Nash, and Bokhari are welcome to speak on the 9th. Obviously, that is an impossibility.”
Wintrich has been cancelled from three universities in the past two weeks, including New York University, according to The Gateway Pundit.
“The MSM, along with university professors, have created such a vitriolic narrative in this country that I think many students have become genuinely scared of diversity of thought, which has led rise to groups like Antifa,” declared Wintrich to Breitbart News. “Adding humor to the entire ordeal, we invited a liberal to debate us on panel. Mic’s Gabe Gonzalez and HuffPo’s James Michael Nicholas both refused. It’s hilarious how liberals in media are so used to simply copy and pasting Media Matters’ narrative that they are fully incapable of speaking off the cuff or engaging in an actual debate.”
“So far, every single invitation to speak that I have received from various student groups has been receded by school administrators,” he continued. “Likewise, Charlie and Allum have never yet publicly spoken at a university. The sole reason these talks were canceled was simply because we are all conservative.”
College Republican and the event’s organizer Arina Merkulova also claimed that the event was cancelled after the university found out the political beliefs of the panelists.
“The university initially said that there wouldn’t be any problem having an impromptu event and even proposed a space for 120 students,” claimed Merkulova. “By the following day, the university found out that the event would include Gateway Pundit and Breitbart journalists and quickly rejected our request by refusing to sign the necessary paperwork.”
“A member of the John Jay club at Columbia was the one I reached out to to get the room,” she continued. “As soon as the John Jay representative taking care of the room disclosed to the advisor that the subject of debate would be ‘free speech’, they backed out.”
Columbia University, whose alumni have included Barack Obama, Chelsea Clinton, and Warren Buffett, did not immediately reply to a request for comment.