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Editor’s note: Over the past several decades, few places in America have become more hostile to free speech than our universities. Yet in the wake of rising anti-Semitism and the pro-Hamas campus rallies and occupations that were sparked by the terror group’s October 7 massacre, university administrators seem to have had a sudden change of heart.
The Freedom Center is exposing the most egregious perpetrators of these double standards in free expression as the Top Ten Ivory Tower Hypocrites. These are universities whose leaders have permitted woke leftist activists to run roughshod over campus rules and violate codes of conduct with impunity, while failing to extend even basic free speech protections to students and faculty with opposing views. The University of Nevada-Las Vegas is #7 on our list.
#7: University of Nevada-Las Vegas
The University of Nevada-Las Vegas claims to champion free expression. In a prominent section of the official university website, the university pledges that “As a public university, UNLV is committed to upholding and protecting freedom of expression. This includes constitutionally protected rights of free speech and assembly, regardless of content.”
UNLV proceeds to explain why upholding free speech is crucial to its mission as an educational institution: “The First Amendment and the university are founded on the philosophy that everyone benefits in an environment where ideas can be expressed and responded to rather than being subject to a rigid, imposed belief system where those who deviate from it are punished,” states the university website. “Freedom of speech serves as the very basis of and foundation for academic inquiry.”
Despite these strong assertions about the importance of protecting free expression, recent events on campus suggest that UNLV has failed to live up to its principles.
In February of 2024, Dr. Asaf Peer, a professor of physics at Bar-Ilan University in Israel, was invited to UNLV to give a lecture on black holes to contribute to a public physics symposium. Dr. Peer’s speech had absolutely nothing to do with Israel’s ongoing defensive war against Hamas, but that didn’t matter to radical agitators on campus, who succeeded in shutting down Peer’s speech while campus police capitulated to the pro-Hamas rioters.
As reported in the Jerusalem Post, Peer was only about 15 minutes into his physics lecture when a barrage of angry protestors burst into the auditorium armed with banners and flags accusing the Israeli professor of genocide.
“Hey Asaf Peer! Because of 1948’s Nakba in Palestine you were able to obtain your PH.D in illegally occupied Ramat Gan is that why you support genocide?” read one sign. “Didn’t higher education teach us to be ethical? Why is administration supporting speakers who openly support genocide?” questioned another.
Showing admirable restraint, Peer invited the protestors to remain in the lecture hall while he continued speaking about black holes and promised to discuss “unrelated issues” with them afterwards. Instead of accepting this generous offer, the protestors escalated their disruption, screeching insults at the professor.
An edited video of the incident captured the protestors’ jeers at the professor. “You should all be ashamed of yourselves!” yelled a female protestor, speaking to the audience at large. When an audience member objected that he could not hear the professor’s physics lecture over their disruption, she responded, “I don’t care about his lecture, I care about the dying children [of Gaza].”
The protestor goes on to accuse the crowd: “If you care so much you wouldn’t be amplifying Zionist voices and coming to these presentations. You’d be amplifying Palestinian voices.”
“And why is it so hard for you to say the words ‘Free Palestine,” the demonstrator continues. “There’s nothing complicated. It’s not a conflict. It’s not a war. It’s a f—king genocide!” The protestors’ tirade continues in this vein for several minutes, with numerous references to “starving children” in Gaza and the use of “white phosphorus” along with claims that “It’s not about Hamas, it’s about human beings.”
Organizers of the event called on the campus police for assistance, but instead of expelling the rioters from the event, the police capitulated entirely to the heckler’s veto. Campus police told the organizers that they could not remove the protestors and instead shut down the event, escorting Peer off campus, allegedly for his own safety.
In an email to the Nevada Current, Peer described his interactions with the UNLV police that night and their failure to expel the demonstrators.
Campus police first asked the professor if his lecture was political in nature. He responded that it was a scientific lecture.
“[Campus police] then went to the corridor to consult with the organizer, and after a few minutes they returned and announced that they decide to end the event, and to escort me outside of the campus, in order to ensure my safety,” Peer explained. “When I asked why they decided to do so, they answered that (1) since the event is announced as a public event, everyone has the right to be present in the room, and they have no right to ask anyone, including the protesters, out of the room. (2) Due to freedom of speech, they cannot enforce the protesters to be quiet.”
“What about my freedom of speech?” Peer questioned, noting in his email that the protesters were successful in shutting down his lecture.
The absurd claim by the UNLV police that since Peer’s speech was a public event, protestors could not be expelled, is directly at odds with UNLV’s Policy on Speech and Advocacy in Public Areas. This policy states that “[Free speech] activities must not, however, unreasonably interfere with the right of the University to conduct its affairs in an orderly manner and to maintain its property, nor may they interfere with the University’s obligation to protect rights of all to teach, study, and fully exchange ideas,” adding that “Physical force, the threat of force, or other coercive actions used to subject anyone to a speech of any kind is expressly forbidden.”
“I did not feel unsafe, and I was surprised that the police decided to end the event, instead of removing the protestors from the room,” Peer told the Jerusalem Post.
The protestors’ motives for disrupting Peer’s speech were unquestionably anti-Semitic. The Israeli professor was on campus to speak about physics, not the Israeli-Hamas War in Gaza. It was Peer’s identity, as an Israeli Jew, that led to the cancellation of his speech, not anything he was communicating.
“We are very concerned about this incident. In the face of it, there appear to be serious questions about campus security, academic freedom and the enforcement of existing University policies on free speech,” UNLV’s Jewish Faculty and Student Group said in a statement. “We have made formal inquiries to senior University leaders, and we are awaiting clarification of their understanding and of their intentions to address this serious matter.”
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) along with other Jewish organizations and community members, also contacted the university to express concern and outrage that Peer’s speech was cancelled due to an illegal protest. In response, UNLV President Keith Whitfield released a statement saying that he was “reviewing the decisions and actions associated with the event to help determine how we can better handle such situations in the future.”
UNLV’s blatant double standard in allowing an illegal, anti-Semitic protest to disrupt a planned science symposium—solely because the speaker was an Israeli Jew—is an astounding breach of that university’s duty to protect free expression. Its failure to enforce any consequences against the intruders, adds to its failure. UNLV is highly deserving of its place on the list of Ivory Tower Hypocrites.
Previously in this series…
The Hamas is your typical leftists run bunch of Bolshevik Scum we would see at
U.C. Berkeley which is more reasons to totally cut off their Public(Tax Payers) Funding by 100%
slimes and hardcore anti-semites.
I attended UNLV way back in the 1970s. Even then, some professors were becoming mealy mouth Lefties, and their lectures were inflected with Marxist rhetoric.
I believe at this point, colleges and universities across the country need a McCarthyist, or more appropriately, a HUAC purge to cleanse the campuses of anti-Americanism, Anti-Semitism, and pro-terrorism.
And some people think I over do it when I call Hamas and their brethren ignorant primitive savages. No one on this planet can name one thing that they have ever contributed to advance the human species in any way whatsoever.
Notions of civilized society and law & order are beyond their intelligence and are antithetical to their primitive barbaric beliefs. Moreover, they prove it on a daily basis.