What is life like for conservatives on college campuses these days? Conservative professors say it’s about concealing your political views. Authors Jon A. Shields and Joshua M. Dunn Sr. wrote Passing on the Right, and they describe interviewing one professor who was so nervous that he asked to meet outdoors in a park at least a mile away from his university. He explained that the interview could jeopardize his tenure track.
While it’s no longer acceptable to force anyone to be so closeted, apparently it is appropriate to treat conservatives this way. Students who lean conservative have been targeted, like the four UCLA students who attended a recent event focused on transgender issues. These members of UCLA’s College Republicans expressed their belief in only two genders and using a restroom that corresponds to a person’s physical anatomy. The students were mercilessly bullied online and also received death threats.
Death threats from liberal students continue to this day, with Boston University student Nicholas Fuentes leaving school after receiving death threats. The 18 year old political science major attended the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, and simply posted to social media that he had attended. It didn’t take long for the hatred against him to begin.
“People tweeted me to go kill myself and said if they see me they will beat the sh– out of me. At least 10 to 20 of them were death threats.”
Fuentes said BU has always allowed him to express his political views, describing events after he posted a video supporting Trump. Students wanted to see an organized debate between Fuentes and a staunch Hillary supporter. BU supported the effort, and the dean provided an auditorium and a security detail. “They really made it happen,” Fuentes said.
Fuentes’ issue is not with BU administration, but with left-leaning students who are threatening his life. He will not return to BU this fall because he fears for his safety; the school confirms he has withdrawn.
Fuentes says he has absolutely “no regrets” about Charlottesville, saying that his generation has “been told our whole lives that white people are racist and evil and should be erased, and that it’s a crime I grew up as a white male.” The Chicago native is Hispanic. He says he’s not racist, but attended the rally because he opposes mass immigration efforts.
Fuentes also called out mainstream media: “The media keeps using this one picture of a person with a Nazi flag, but there were more than a thousand there who didn’t have Nazi flags.” Fuentes says most people who attended were regular, decent, non-violent people.
Fuentes hosts a You Tube talk show and says that most of his conservative student followers have experienced similar backlash from their leftist peers. He starts school at Auburn University in January 2018, but won’t be attending any political rallies anytime soon. “I was very shaken up. The political climate has become so intense, violent and toxic.”
