Who holds the blame for the events in Chicago?

[TJ in Oregon]

Lol well Trump's been asking for this for months. There's no excuse for rioting still. But when your whole persona is built on pitting one group of people against another, sometimes it actually happens. If only both sides could lose.

[TJ in Oregon]

haha this forum

If any of you bothered to conduct basic research, you'd realize that this catastrophe of a rally was inevitable: Trump was holding a rally at a university, which is to say that he was implicitly being subsidized by student tuition dollars, a point noted by faculty members of the University of Illinois-Chicago. Apparently, controversy had been building for quite some time before this rally took place for entirely understandable reasons, especially among students, who had every right to be mad that a literal fascist was invading their campus against the wishes of nearly the entire student body and faculty.

It's hard to say that students were "disrupting" an event that took place on their campus, where more than a few of them live. If anything, Trump was disrupting their college, which is largely non-white, by being a magnet for Stormfronters and white supremacists. I, for one, would be very angry if I had to deal with a bunch of deranged, asinine white supremacists on my college campus who were not students. I'd protest their presence and call them names, all of which is legal and "above the board". So would you!

Then, there's fact that Trump supporters have a penchant for violence. Do you know what isn't violent in the slightest? Tearing a Trump banner or a Trump poster. Do you want is violent? Sucker-punching a protester or "throwing debris" at a protester or getting in a brawl with a protester. Most violent acts at Trump rallies have been perpetrated by attendees. Naturally, this has been overlooked because most protesters thus far have been young Black or Latino men, who are clearly bloodthirsty thugs seeking violence.

Who I blame for the events in Chicago:
1. UIC administrators, who should be suspended as soon as possible for allowing this happen. These people are morons.
2. Donald Trump supporters, who are truly bottom of the barrel human beings who get off on beating people up.
3. Donald Trump, who uses events like these for PR purposes.

Does the university regularly allow usage of its facilities to political candidates for rallies? Or is it only acceptable to do so for "approved" political candidates?

[TJ in Oregon]

In this particular case, I'm not sure, but the UIC would likely run into legal difficulties if it refused to allow Trump to use its space if it, in the past, allowed other candidates to host rallies. That said, I think political candidates should have the good sense and decency to not hold rallies in locations where they're obviously unwelcome/despised.

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https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/03/09/trump-rallies-raise-safety-concerns-college-campuses

This article does a decent-enough job of highlighting the valid concerns of faculty. All in all, I think there could have been clever/legals ways that the administration could have prevented this event from taking place, to the benefit of both Trump supporters and students.

Your article states that “It has been our standard practice for decades to rent available space on campus to any political candidate when requested”. So there's the answer to that question.

As for the rest of it, clearly the concerns about violence were valid ones, but I do have a bone to pick with Professor Brier, in that if a group of students attends a rally to protest inside the venue, it is entirely reasonable for the security to eject them. It's hard to imagine the security for any event not doing so. To expect otherwise is absurd.

Also there is a much wider line between actual violence and having people say nasty things than is presented here. Every student has the right to be safe. Safety does not mean a right not to have people say mean things.

[TJ in Oregon]

Surely then, safety also means the right to be able to respond to mean things without the fear of physical retaliation, no? As I pointed out in an earlier post, the issue is that Trump rallies nearly always attract protesters and, whether or not this is an appropriate response to Trump, the reaction from Trump supporters is often violent. I believe that this was what the faculty member was referring to.

Fear of physical retaliation could literally mean anything. Yes, there have been occasional scrums at Trump rallies before, but that is still not the normal occurrence. I would say a credible threat of violence aimed at a specific set of individuals would be necessary to ban an event from campus.

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Indeed you do reap what you sew. I would agree that we should not expect a university to host a George Wallace rally without protesters, but I do think that free speech actually does mean free speech. If the university has a policy of allowing political candidates space for rallies, then they must do so even if that politician is George Wallace. I'd applaud your protest and yet believe you should be ejected for holding it. The very point of having free speech is precisely to allow people to say things that are offensive. For better or for worse, a foundational principle of our country is the ability to publicly advocate an immoral attitude. If we attempted to change that principle, we would be unable to enunciate a broadly agreeable moral framework on which to determine which views are acceptable to say, unless of course such a framework is imposed via fiat. If it were, it would make life pretty intolerable for those in the opposition. I for one would rather die on my feet than live on my knees beneath the yoke of a progressive state that tells me what I am and am not allowed to believe.

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They haven't stumped him yet and indeed I'm not at all convinced that doing so in the Republican Primary is at all their intention. I am a Republican and lots of things make me feel bad. Such is life.

[TJ in Oregon]

huh? I was not advocating for any sort of legislation banning certain candidates from speaking or anything of the sort. I simply believe that it would have been sensible for university administrators to search for means to re-route Trump away from speaking at their campus through various channels. They could have conveniently rented out space to other groups before the primary or asked him politely to consider holding his event elsewhere and coordinated with the private sector to make this happen. None of this, to my knowledge, would have been illegal. It would have been sensible. It certainly would not have invoked the specter of a "progressive state". It would not have been an infringement upon free speech. Any claims to the contrary are ridiculous and display a total ignorance of how speech rights are exercised in practice: they're governed by social norms. Trump violated social norms by attempting to hold a rally at this university. There would have been nothing illegal or immoral to attempt to steer him elsewhere.

Frankly TJ, the fact that you're implicitly siding with Trump in going to great lengths to defend his God-Given Constitutional Right to speak at a Public University here goes a long way in explaining my disdain for #NeverTrump Republicans: your commitment is shallow and the catalyst for this commitment is hardly inspiring, rooted not in any sort of commitment to democracy but rather to ideological purity. You've expressed a long-time fidelity to a party that has embraced xenophobia and race-baiting for decades. Now that social movements of the left are actively opposing Trump, your response is to side with the Presumptive Republican nominee rather than applaud the efforts of protesters. There's nothing noble or valiant about defending the speech rights of Donald Trump. We all know the legal arguments here and there has been no claim made that Trump lacks the right to host a rally at a public university. As a result, it's clear that you're making a different kind of argument, an argument that fits into the storied template of the right, in which students on the left are little more than wannabe authoritarians who must be thwarted by esteemable solons in positions of power.

Umm, well, unfortunately some fraction, maybe ~30% of the students on the left are exactly that. And no, I'm not siding with Trump. And no, I'm not siding with the protesters either. Trump fortunately does not lack the right to speak at a public university, thanks to the administration maintaining neutrality as they should. Sure the university could come up with some other reason to deny him the venue and lie about it, but if they had, they would still be denying him a venue on ideological grounds but with a quick legal wink-wink cya. Why am I making this argument? It sure as heck isn't to try and spin things in Trump's favor. He's brought all of this upon himself and can deal with the consequences. I'm making it because it's an important point that needs to be remembered in this discussion, which has gone on the tangent of whether the university should have allowed Trump to there. I am aware you have not voiced support of legislation banning Trump, nor do I think you seriously want to take away my rights to free speech (though the most ruthless of the left wing student kind certainly do). I was not accusing you; I was merely stating my view on the topic. A large fraction of my recent posts are criticizing Trump; am I not allowed to say something else every once in a while?