COLUMBIA PULLS U-EY: SCRAPS 'MINUTEMAN'

Columbia University students have scrapped plans to hear from the founder of the Minuteman Project - a year after their classmates violently interrupted a speech by the anti-illegal-immigration activist.

The nonpartisan Columbia Political Union voted late Monday night to cancel a planned Oct. 4 appearance by Jim Gilchrist, who is based in California.

Part of the reason I am such a staunch opponent of the Left is because of incident at Columbia University in November 1998. I was a freshman at the University of Delaware, and had joined the College Republicans at the beginning of the school year. I attended a conference at Columbia organized by an organization called Accuracy in Academia. The speakers there included Ward Connerly and Dinesh D'Souza, and among the issues being discussed was affirmative action.

We arrived in NYC on a Friday evening, and our College Republican club president said as we were coming out of the subway that, "oh yeah, we're going to be protested." We arrived at the conference venue on campus, and saw about 100 protesters of various left-wing stripes shouting us down from behind a police barrier. The hatred was quite registerable. Their behavior was outrageous.

The Columbia administration appeased these protesters by limiting attendance to Columbia students on Saturday, effectively barring the students from other colleges and universities from attending. The conference organizers took everyone across the street to Morningside Park. The left-wing protesters caught wind of this, and they came in force. The NYPD had to come by and stand between because tensions between us and them were rising. I approached one of the leftists to see if I could get some of their material, and he wanted me to pay him for his "International Socialist Organization" paper. I persisted, and he finally gave me a free copy.

The whole experience opened my eyes to the threat that these people pose to our country and our civilization.

You can read more about this "incident" at Columbia Censors AIA Conference.

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