Student protesters from Lewis & Clark Law School in Portland, Oregon, derailed an event on Monday featuring American Enterprise Institute scholar Christina Hoff Sommers.
Student protesters took over an event featuring Christina Hoff Sommers on Monday afternoon. A group of students with a massive sign that read “Rape Culture is Not a Myth,” occupied the front of the lecture room in which the event was held. Periodically, students would chant and sing, successfully drowning out Sommers’ voice from traveling past the podium from which she spoke.
The event was documented by independent reporter Andy C. Ngo. Videos from his Twitter account show students taking over the lecture hall and reading from pre-written notes that they had typed out on their smartphones.
The protesters came organized with songs about refusing platforms to “fascists.” Some protesters demanded that Sommers take questions from the audience before she was able to get through her speech.
Prior to the lecture, students from Lewis & Clark Law School’s National Lawyers Guild chapter called for the cancellation of the event via a letter that was published and spread throughout the community. The letter called Sommers a “known fascist” and “rape apologist/denialist.”
“We have recently become aware of a troubling event being held within the confines of our community,” the letter read. “Under the guise of “open debate” and “free discourse,” the Federalist Society found it necessary to unilaterally invite a known fascist to our campus to encourage what we believe to be an act of aggression and violence toward members of our society who experience racial and gendered oppression.”
In a tweet, Sommers claimed that the Diversity Dean at Lewis & Clark Law School approached the podium in the middle of the lecture and asked her to finish speaking and take questions.
“I was never able to develop my argument.Shouldn’t the dean have insisted protesters allow me to finish, rather than cut speech short?” Sommers wrote.
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