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A friend of mine (Dwight Vines) who was President of Northeast Louisiana University in Monroe, LA sent out this email last night. He was prez from 1976 to 1991.

“Almost every day the news media exposes another university that has lost control of their students and other agitators. I worked for universities for 38 years. but I never remember hearing about even one university losing control of group activities on its campus.

In 1978, Northeast Louisiana University invited a representative of the Shah of Iran to speak on the campus. Iranian students and their friends enrolled in USA universities were not pleased and planned to prevent the talk at NLU. After they began recruiting students to come to NLU to protest, we learned about their plan.

I discussed the matter with NLU officials and we decided that we would not let off-campus students disrupt the speaker. I met with local law enforcement officials from Monroe, West Monroe and Ouachita Parish. asking them to help NLU develop a plan for the situation.

When the time arrived, students attempted to interrupt the speaker. They were twice told not to interrupt by Dean of Students, Tom Murphy. On the third interruption, we asked law enforcement to clear Brown Auditorium.

When the smoke cleared, there were about 70 demonstrators in local jails. The protesters refused to give their names, so they were booked as John Does. After about two weeks, a local Muslim doctor paid a fine for each of them and they were released after signing a commitment not to return to NLU.

This was the biggest story NLU ever had in the news media in Europe and the Middle East.

I rest my case.”