DePaul claimed they blocked Shapiro from speaking due to "security concerns"[0]. In particular, students in favor of safe spaces and trigger warnings threatened to riot, block the doors, and prevent student access to the event. DePaul capitulated to this bullying by banning Shapiro.
Related: California State University-Los Angeles planned on hosting Shapiro to speak, but demanded[1] the student group which invited him to pay $600 to the university in security fees. When the student group refused, the university blocked his speech.
I'm not aware of this happening to speakers holding majority political viewpoint; it affects the minority viewpoints primarily. Frame it in terms of race: imagine a modern campus saying, "We allow blacks to speak, but only if they pay hundreds of dollars to provide security against the white riots that will inevitably arise."
[0]: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/aug/1/ben-shapiro-b...
I'm a grad student at DePaul at the loop campus so I don't really follow much of what is going on with the undergrads at the main campus, but it seems to me that the administration is taking a hard stance because of people like Milo who are mostly there for shock effect and not because they are saying anything of substance. His speech was successfully protested and he wasn't invited back.
Who gets to create the definition of 'hate speech'? You, I assume?
> ...and not because they are saying anything of substance.
Because he's not substantive to you and people who agree with you, right?
Free speech is great as long as it's within acceptable boundaries!
There is zero difference. "Hate speech" is a phrase invented by modern progressives to describe disagreeable views. It has zero meaning outside of pop liberal circles.
I'm not entirely familiar with the US usage of the term, but that doesn't seem right to me. The pre-WW2 British Public Order Act (1936) was enacted to stop attacks by British Facists on Jews, and part of it was a ban on the "use [of] threatening and abusive words"[1]
It has zero meaning outside of pop liberal circles
That certainly isn't true. In many countries there are laws against it[2]
edit: I believe that students are also consumers. The two are not mutually exclusive. Tuition is pretty high these days. I guess the difficult part is finding the right balance.
I would say that the students certainly do have the right to complain and protest as long as it is not violent and not terribly disruptive. Complaining and protesting is PART of the open exchange of ideas. Physically blockading events is not, shouting down speakers while they are speaking is not, and in general throwing an adult-sized tantrum until you get your way is not.
For that matter, if the speaker is invited by a student organization that the complaining student is not a member of, why should that student complain? Just don't go.
Protesting the speaker's existence is difficult to intellectually justify as a healthy exchange of ideas, including critique.
These days, what we see is a lot of the latter -- up to and including attempting to prevent attendance of the event -- and very little of the former.
Should creationist students lobby to remove the teaching of evolution from the curriculum? I understand that it's not an identical situation, but the general point is that students are putting a certain level of trust in the university to educate them, and having a line-item veto on the manner that that's done leads to insanity if you actually apply it equitably. If students knew exactly what they needed to learn, going to college would be largely irrelevant.