It really doesn’t matter where it’s held or not held now. Harvard was willing to allow on campus an event that attacked a class of students on their campus.
Nor does their excuse about free speech hold water. That is precisely the excuse one would expect to hear out of anyone who wanted to attack a class of people. If the Nazis wanted to hold an anti-Jewish rally at Harvard, one would expect them to use “free speech” as the issue.
So what is Harvard’s crime?
Honesty. Simple honesty.
Had Harvard said, “A hateful group has petitioned us for an opportunity to degrade all of our Catholic students at an on-campus event at 8 pm on 12 May at Queen’s Head Pub. Their existence as a group is premised on their hatred of a class of human beings. We do not recommend this program to anyone, yet, provided our security concerns are addressed, it will go forward because of our open forum policy on Harvard.”
This “re-enactment of a Satanic Mass” garbage was almost an advertisement. It was totally devoid of explanation that Satanism’s very existence is owed to a desire to degrade that class of students that adhere’s to Christianity.
Nobody would have bothered the “Satanic Temple” had it not tried a stunt of this kind.
It got Catholics boiling mad, but other Christians were angry too and it was forced away from Harvard. For now.
That said, the politics of what is “for” and “anti” can get mighty precarious. To love the devil is to hate God, and in the end it is to get yourself damned, but many moderns aren’t taking sides in the fight. If the Satanists had put on an explicit “devil love fest” they might not have gotten any opposition to speak of.
And, I presume, President Faust (the jokes write themselves) would find a reason to forbid it. In two seconds.