Free speech advocate won’t be kept quiet

Free speech advocate Dave Rubin of The Rubin Report joined Boston Herald Radio’s “Press Time” program yesterday with Tom Shattuck to talk about his appearance at Harvard University, which was scheduled for last night.

Q: Have you been harassed and shutdown by colleges as of yet?

A: I’ve actually had a pretty good track record.

Definitely I’ve had the protesters, I’ve had students come in and ask very challenging questions in the Q&A, which are usually pretty respectful, not always.

I was at UCLA with Milo (Yiannopoulos) about a year ago. That thing was a total fiasco, calling in bomb threats and creating a wall of students so other students couldn’t get in — so they’re not really against walls, they just don’t like Trump’s wall — so all sorts of ways that they’re sometimes subtly and sometimes overtly trying to silence people.

But I think if I’ve created a little bit of an issue for myself, that I genuinely do want to hear from all sides, I genuinely do want the ideas to be heard and I think that has somehow shielded me a little bit from some of the protesters.

But unfortunately we live in a time where people throw all these whateverthe-term-of-the-day-is, and whatever-the-pejorativeof-the-day-is, and they throw it around so callously and so casually that people who these things obviously don’t apply to get hit with them.

And then you get a pushback in ways that you really shouldn’t.

I’m a firm believer that America is a giant and wonderful country of something of 350 million people and if you want to live in a pluralistic democratic society as I do, we have to make room for people with different ideas.

And that’s the idea that I’m going to keep pushing out.

Q: I’m on Reddit here and it says that you now have joined the Right Wing Gas Lighters here. So I see that you think you’re just having conversations, Dave, but there’s a whole bunch of people who think you’ve now thrown in with evil.

A: Think of how silly these things are when I hear some of this stuff ... now first off I’m gay married, so I believe that should get you some credit ... I mean I’m pro-choice, I’m for legalizing marijuana, I’m for reforming the prison system, I’m not for nation-building, I’m for euthanasia, I mean we could go on and on.

I’m for a strong public education system, which I benefited from ... so the idea when they just throw these labels at you, it’s almost like a honor at this point, because it’s like, ‘Wow, you guys really can’t fight these ideas so you just say some crazy stuff.’ ”