Easier to advocate against Bannon than support his speaking at UChicago

I'm sure the 1,000 plus UChicago alums signing a letter to President Bob Zimmer to cancel Steve Bannon's upcoming participation in a business school debate are sincere. And I doubt I could easily get 999 other UChicago alums to sign a letter advocating, as I have, for letting him speak. It may simply be the passion to deny a forum to an unlikable public social critic and tweak the establishment, in this case the vaunted bastion of free expression University of Chicago, exceeds that of those interested in hearing all sides of an issue. After reading the anti Bannon letter I'm more firmly convinced Bannon must be heard.

In arguing for banning Bannon the letter fails. It states "Stephen Bannon seeks to silence dissenting voices of large portions of society" without a word of substantiation. “Denying him a platform to speak at our university does not restrict our environment of fearless freedom of debate and deliberation; rather, it protects that environment.” How can the authors not comprehend that statement precisely restricts the UChicago environment of 'fearless freedom of debate and deliberation'? Would the thousand UChicago alums feel the same way if an Evangelical college banned Pentagon Papers purloiner Daniel Ellsberg or famed social critic Noam Chomsky from speaking because he might hurt the feelings and environment of sheltered Christian believers? Steve Bannon is not some unknown extremist troll hiding in anonymity and dug up to cause uproar. He may have been the most important single person responsible for electing the president, and served as his chief adviser and strategist. We ignore his views and appeal to tens of millions at our peril.

The story says the thousand letter signers go back decades. I suspect a substantial majority are fairly recent grads who, in spite of their UChicago education, still have much to learn about the high wire act of American freedom.