Political correctness spreads to private Christian university which denied a conservative club

I realized just how bad the political correctness on college campuses had gotten after University of New Haven President Steven H. Kaplan disinvited me from giving a lecture on forensics to his students. Apparently, my personal feelings on Black Lives Matter made me too dangerous to step foot on campus and discredited my expertise in the field of criminal investigation.

Ridiculous.

But this kind of overreaction isn’t exclusive to New Haven; it’s everywhere. That’s why lately I’ve been pointing it out.

Samford University in Alabama issued a temporary denial to students seeking to launch a Young Americans for Freedom (YAF) chapter until the language of the club’s charter is made less “inflammatory.”

The chair of the Campus Life Committee, Shannon Ashe, told the conservative students, “We are looking for the YAF student group to amend or justify the inflammatory language listed in its Purpose.”

As The College Fix explains, YAF was launched in the 1960s with the help of the group’s Sharon Statement which states in part:

“[T]he market economy, allocating resources by the free play of supply and demand, is the single economic system compatible with the requirements of personal freedom and constitutional government … the forces of international Communism are, at present, the greatest single threat to these liberties; … the United States should stress victory over, rather than coexistence with, this menace …”

It was that language, specifically the last line above, that caused an issue with Samford’s President Andrew Westmoreland. Ashe added that concern in her e-mail to students, telling them that kind of language may have worked back in the ‘60s but it “does not hold the same in 2016.”

A spokesperson for YAF had this reaction in an e-mail to The Fix:

“It is widely celebrated by historians and scholars as one of the most important articulations of modern conservatism. The fact that anybody at Samford University accused it of being ‘inflammatory’ or ‘exclusive,’ as they did in an email we published on our website, is laughable. Young Americans for Freedom chapters, which have existed across the country since the adoption of the Sharon Statement in 1960, bring the best of the Conservative Movement to campuses. YAF empowers conservative students to act on their beliefs and make a real change in the world.”

President Westmoreland maintains that his decision was never to deny the club’s existence but to delay it’s formation until the divisive language was softened.  (Does the college mean something less “inflammatory” like adding in some Black Lives Matter talking points, an organization that advocates for the killing of law enforcement officers?)  In the end, both parties came to a solution which allows the club to form without any changes to its Sharon Statement. However, Samford won’t approve the chapter until May — that is, AFTER the main student who launched the club graduates.

“She will not be able to enjoy the fruits of her labor,” the YAF spokesperson said.