MIKE PENCE DESERVES TO BE HEARD
Whatever one’s views on former vice president Mike Pence — ours have been critical — there’s no denying that efforts to silence and cancel him have been bipartisan. They are also unwarranted.
By refusing intense pressure by President Donald Trump and his acolytes to unconstitutionally refuse to certify the 2020 election results, Pence took what was one of the most consequential stands in the history of the vice presidency. There is no denying his courage on Jan. 6 last year, when rioters roamed the halls of the Capitol bellowing “Hang Mike Pence!” The Secret Service hid him in an underground Senate loading dock, where he spent more than four hours, along with his wife and daughter.
Pence’s actions that day have made him anathema in many conservative circles, including among some rightwing evangelical Christians who were once the firmest part of his base. At an appearance before one such group last year in Florida, he was booed, heckled and called a “traitor.”
In appearances before more diverse audiences, his reception has been no more hospitable. Protests have attended his speeches at Stanford University, the University of Iowa and other campuses.
It’s a constitutionally protected act to protest a politician whose views or record offend. It’s another thing to deny him a forum. Unfortunately, that is what some students are advocating ahead of a scheduled appearance by Pence on April 12 at the University of Virginia — a stance that is not only wrongheaded but also, in the case of a public university, probably illegal.
Universities by definition are places where the marketplace of ideas should thrive, and where spirited debate involving entrenched, even incendiary views must be protected. Exceptions to that rule should be few and far between, focused mainly on overt advocacy for violence and hatred. A university that dishonors those principles isn’t fully a university; it’s a tribal talking shop of the like-minded, in service to censorship.
Last year, U-Va.’s Board of Visitors affirmed its commitment to free expression in endorsing a statement specifying that education itself “requires freedom to speak, write, inquire, listen, challenge, and learn, including through exposure to a range of ideas.”
Sadly, that “range of ideas” is apparently too broad for some at U-Va., including at the campus newspaper, the Cavalier Daily, which said in an editorial that Pence “is not entitled to a platform,” citing his record on issues concerning LGBTQ individuals, minorities and immigrants. His appearance, the paper said, “threatens the lives” of students and others on campus.
In fact, Pence has spoken at scores of universities, to the detriment of no one’s safety.
We happen to agree that Pence, a former congressman and governor of Indiana, has been deeply wrong on many issues, including the ones cited by the student paper. Intolerance has been a theme of his politics. But to deny him a forum on that basis — not least at a taxpayer-funded university — is to sanctify intolerance of a different stripe, equally toxic, and dress it up as existential concern. Pence should be heard.