Seattle University pulls support for immigration panel

The debate over free speech on college campuses returns to Seattle once again.

More than 200 people signed a petition on Change.org that reads “Cancel The Federalist Society’s Social Justice Monday at Seattle University School of Law.”

RELATED: Free speech, like democracy, is messy

The Federalist Society is a conservative student group on the Seattle University campus. Originally, the group was scheduled to co-sponsor an event to discuss immigration policy on Oct. 16. The other co-sponsor: the Access to Justice Institute.

After the petition went up, Seattle University School of Law Dean Annette Clark announced the Access to Justice Institute was pulling its sponsorship.

One of the comments on the petition came from Destinee Evers.

I was present for the Federalist Society’s event on October 2. The Society is pushing a discussion that is counterproductive to the school’s expressed commitment to social justice and racial equity. As an institution that recruits heavily on that platform, the University has an obligation to step in here and demonstrate that commitment through action.

Patrick Gregory is a reporter for Bloomberg BNA, he’s been following the story and spoke to 770 KTTH’s Jason Rantz. Gregory acknowledges this isn’t strictly a first amendment issue because Seattle University is a private university, but he notes there’s still an irony in law students attempting to shut down an event like this.

“People who go to law school become judges, they become legislators, they become, obviously, attorneys,” Gregory said. “The question is do we want our students  to respect and appreciate free speech, which is obviously correlated with the first amendment, that they may be called to uphold as legislators or judges.”

The event will still go on with the Federalist Society as the only sponsor, but one panelist has dropped out. Gregory said there’s no indication the remaining panelists will be all that controversial.

“The people who signed this petition did not know who the panelists were going to be,” Gregory said, “and it actually turns out that both the panelists that will be there support a path to citizenship. So it wasn’t going to be a situation where you have Ann-Coulter-type immigration views espoused, at least by the people on the panel.”

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