The student government association at Whitworth University blocked a speaker who fled Maoist China from speaking to students, Campus Reform reports.
Whitworth is a private Christian university in Spokane, Washington.
The student government voted 9-4 to reject the school’s Turning Point USA chapter’s request to host Xi Van Fleet, who fled Maoist China and uses her platform to draw parallels between woke culture and China’s cultural revolution.
Van Fleet regularly speaks out against Critical Race Theory (CRT), cancel culture and the left’s suppression of opposing viewpoints.
The school’s student government defended its decision saying they “were fearful of her bringing views to campus that would be hurtful or offensive,” according to Grace Stiger, Whitworth’s Turning Point USA chapter’s president.
The tweets the student government deemed offensive criticized diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), Black Lives Matter and environmental justice.
Stiger told Campus Reform that this is not the first time the school’s woke student government has blocked her club’s speaker requests. She said her club gets more pushback and opposing votes than “any other club” on campus.
Van Fleet said the student government’s decision is “extra concerning” because it happened at a Christian university that is “supposedly more conservative.”
“What are they afraid of?” Van Fleet asked in an interview with Campus Reform. “Those people who believe in lived experience, then they are going to get the lived experience from me because I’m not talking about an idea that I read or researched or studied.”
However, Van Fleet said she is not surprised this happened given the current state of American college campuses.
The canceled speaker said that she hopes college students will learn from China’s cultural revolution. She warned that people who are eager to cancel those with opposing viewpoints have to be prepared that one day they may be canceled themselves.
“When you cancel people now,” Van Fleet said, “you have to be prepared to be canceled later.”