Opinion: An event with Charlie Kirk and Dennis Prager ruffled feathers at Arizona State University. Apparently, faculty think they need to protect students.
So, I’m reading my Wall Street Journal on Monday and trying to imagine the faculty twits at Arizona State University who are afraid of Dennis Prager.
Dennis Prager?
You’re joking, right?
Dennis Prager, the snow-capped, sweatered uncle of Los Angeles radio who spent his career helping mothers and fathers in Southern California see beyond their drab lives.
Who used his microphone to teach that human relationships give life purpose long after the news headlines fade away.
‘A deep hostility toward divergent views’
That Dennis Prager?
The man who gave us “The Happiness Hour” and dropped pearls of Jewish wisdom on his eventual national audience?
Apparently, he’s a threat to Tempe and its college students and, most of all, its trembling faculty.
At least, that’s what Ann Atkinson was telling the national readership of one of America’s most respected newspapers on Monday.
Atkinson is executive director of the T.W. Lewis Center for Personal Development at ASU’s Barrett Honors College.
She accused the university of giving lip service to what a university is supposed to be — an arena for challenging and competing ideas.
“Beneath ASU’s written commitment to intellectual diversity lies a deep hostility toward divergent views,” Atkinson wrote.
ASU faculty condemned the event
That became strikingly clear in February, she explained, when the Lewis Center hosted Dennis Prager, Charlie Kirk and a third, less controversial speaker, for an event called “Health, Wealth, and Happiness.”
Pretty scary, huh?
As Atkinson explained:
“At the names of Messrs. Prager and Kirk, the faculty of ASU’s honors college were outraged. Thirty-nine of its 47 faculty signed a letter to the dean condemning the event on grounds that the speakers are ‘purveyors of hate who have publicly attacked women, people of color, the LGBTQ community, [and] institutions of our democracy.’
“The signers decried ASU ‘platforming and legitimating’ their views, describing Messrs. Prager and Kirk as ‘white nationalist provocateurs’ whose comments would undermine the value of democratic exchange by marginalizing the school’s most vulnerable students.”
Events manager fired, center dismantled
Atkinson explained that professors used “scare tactics” to intimidate students and discourage their attendance. Students feared that if they went they would put their grades in jeopardy.
In the end, the event was “a resounding success” with 1,500 people in attendance, but the majority of the faces in the audience were older, she wrote.
Eventually the roof would begin to fall on those who planned it.
“Shortly after ‘Health, Wealth, and Happiness,’ Lin Blake, the events operations manager at ASU Gammage Theater, was fired by ASU Gammage. Before her firing, Ms. Blake told me that she was ‘berated by ASU Gammage leadership for coordinating an event that did not align with the values of ASU Gammage.’ And as of June 30, ASU will dismantle the Lewis Center and terminate my position as its executive director.”
“Barrett Honors College leadership told me this is purely a business decision, despite my raising more than $500,000 in the last year through the center.”
The Wall Street Journal sought comment from ASU Gammage executives, but got no answer, according to an editor’s note.
On Tuesday, ASU officials took issue with the Journal op-ed and said Atkinson was not fired, that in fact the primary donor for the Lewis Center discontinued his commitment. They also wrote that Gammage management was not involved in planning the event and thus any of its personnel moves would have been unrelated.
Dennis Prager terrifies them, but why?
That said, let’s get something straight. Dennis Prager is not a “white nationalist provocateur.”
I spent my early career as a journalist living in Dennis Prager’s Los Angeles. I can assure you he is a man who thrills at Southern California’s cultural mosaic.
He loved to tell the story of how moms in greater Los Angeles would drive up to street corners, pick up Mexican men (undocumented migrants), bring them home and trust completely that they would do quality work performing odd jobs — moving furniture, laying flagstone, trimming hedges.
Prager told that story because it had a point:
The informal economy of Los Angeles depended on the absolute faith that those immigrant men are hardworking, dependable and in all ways trustworthy.
The proof of their good character was that Los Angeles homemakers continued hiring them — complete strangers — to come to their home every day.
That’s Dennis Prager.
I know. Petrifying.
The problem: Prager came with Charlie Kirk
With Prager came Charlie Kirk, founder and president of Turning Point USA, a conservative youth movement working to produce more votes for Republicans on college campuses.
Charlie Kirk is a talented communicator who is pretty much your run-of-the-mill Trump Republican.
He rode Donald Trump’s coattails to early fame, but he can be a big dope at times. Sometimes it seems the only lesson he gleaned from his proximity to Trump is that life can be lived in perpetual adolescence.
Another view: Don’t look down on those fighting culture wars
He is no threat to smart, savvy college students and particularly students of color and LGBTQ.
If he is a threat to anyone, it’s to the Republican Party, which has of late been getting killed in college towns on Election Day.
ASU students don’t need to be protected
You would think the liberal doyens of the university would want more Charlie — more cowbell — on their campuses.
But nope. He’s too scary.
And especially for poor BIPOC and LGBTQ students, who really need the faculty of Arizona State University to shield them from the big, bad conservative ideas that float just beyond the campus mall.
If I were one of those students, this would be the moment I’d go Abbie Hoffman and the Chicago Seven on ASU faculty — combat fatigues, bullhorns, middle fingers, the works.
When the faculty lounge thinks they’re your savior and must swaddle and shield you from unpopular ideas, it’s time to rebel.
They think you’re stupid and weak.
Introduce them to the truth.
Raise hell.
Phil Boas is an editorial columnist for The Arizona Republic. Email him at [email protected].