A Letter to President Marshall

To President John Marshall,

I am Gabriel McDowell, a student finishing his fifth and final year at Colorado Mesa University and hoping to graduate with a bachelor’s degree in history, come mid-May. I have no doubt you have guessed the reason for my writing to you. It concerns both your announcement that Jared Taylor had been invited to campus, and Jared Taylor’s response to your announcement.

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It is in this context that your and Taylor’s announcements have been made. It is all I hear students talk about around campus, on the sidewalks and dining tables. To put it bluntly, President Marshall, the students do not put much stock in the principles you claim to hold dear. They perceive your position on inflammatory speech to be spineless cowardice—not because they necessarily disagree that free speech is important, or that we ought to counter hateful rhetoric with superior counterarguments, but because they do not see you embodying these principles beyond your emails. To the students, your invocations of free speech only seem to be issued in defense of inflammatory hawks targeting the most vulnerable students in our community; your blunt interpretation of the First Amendment, without regard for the legal exceptions outlined for unprotected speech, is seen as enabling; and your calls for civility come only when students retaliate against fighting words. Most damningly, these sermons do not seem to come from an inspiring leader like Martin Luther King Jr., but a man perceived by the student body to hide in his office when the ugliness of real conflict rears its head.

Jared Taylor seems to agree. He does not appear to appreciate the platform you have allowed him, despite the backlash it is bringing down on you and the potential risk you are taking of encouraging local hate groups to converge on CMU or act with boldness in the months following this event. Instead he calls you a coward and challenges you to demonstrate how easily beatable his arguments are yourself. Yet he does not have to have the final word. As the president of this university, I believe you have the power and ability to steer this event in a direction that will strike a blow against racial segregation and demonstrate the virtues of meeting hate speech with better speech. Why not arrange for Jared Taylor to debate you on matters of diversity and ethnonationalism, or another faculty member of your choosing that you trust to perform well in a debate? You have staffed this school with intelligent professionals who would readily help you assemble counterarguments and prepare you for the showdown.

I urge you to lead this school by example. {snip}

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