I briskly walked through Belinda Hall and toward my afternoon class at Harvard Law School. My pace slowed as I approached a grouping of signs and a large banner that read, “It’s time to end racism at HLS.”

Institutional, rampant racism at Harvard Law? What an off-base claim. Home to some of our nation’s civil rights leaders, Harvard Law is not a bigoted hub of racism but a place where men and women of all races peacefully co-exist in pursuit of higher education.

ADVERTISEMENT

But a select group of students felt otherwise and formed a group called “Reclaim Harvard Law.”

In one student’s words, she sought to “Reclaim Harvard Law” because “it’s unacceptable for HLS to only teach us how to uphold oppressive systems and not how to TEAR them down.”

Ironically, what was oppressive was not the U.S. legal system – as this student claimed – but the very student-led group seeking to fight it.

In response to the “Reclaim” movement, a conservative colleague of mine hung signs around school asserting that Reclaim was stifling free speech. Reclaim’s response? They removed the conservative signs, demanding that signs be approved by the student-led group.

A group leader said, “We have a process for approving signage in Belinda Hall that was established by majority vote.”

Majority vote of whom? Not the administration or a sanctioned rule-making body but a vote by an unofficial group of students who occupied a common area.

According to the Harvard Law Record, “The group held a vote with its ‘plenary committee,’… to decide that only approved signs could be posted. They voted to deny… (the conservative student’s) signs.”

So, to be clear, one group of students laid claim to a common area and unilaterally attempted to exile conservative thought from the space.

The incident led the Dean of Students to reiterate the obvious, “The University’s and Law School’s commitment to freedom of speech and academic freedom … requires that those who use shared space for expressive purposes must respect the rights of others to do the same… .”

The effort to squelch conservative speech is not just cabined to the brick roads of Cambridge; indeed, it exists on campuses nationwide. The country saw censorship in the flames that ravaged UC Berkeley last Thursday as rioters protested the scheduled speech of Milo Yiannopoulos.

Fireworks launched at police officers and “Kill Trump” graffiti smeared across walls were but a few of the tactics rioters used to thwart Yiannopoulos’ speech. Their violent efforts proved successful with Berkeley caving to their demands.

#BREAKING: UC Berkeley cancels Milo Yiannopoulos after violent protests break out on campus https://t.co/jocXNElivr pic.twitter.com/wfyoZshLZZ — The Hill (@thehill) February 2, 2017

Yiannopoulos’ cancellation comes after a long series of conservative speakers being barred from academia.

The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) maintains a “disinvitation database,” where it tracks speakers disinvited from college campuses and whether they were pushed out by the left or the right.

Using FIRE data, I found that 81 percent of canceled speakers were pushed out by the left in 2016; meanwhile, an infinitesimal .05 percent of speakers were stopped by the right. In fact, there is just one recorded incident in 2016 of a university canceling a left-wing speaker.

Meanwhile, the list of exiled conservatives is vast and egregious.

A Virginia Tech professor “vetoed the (speaking) invitation” of distinguished Wall Street Journal columnist and Manhattan Institute Senior Fellow Jason Riley after learning that Riley, a black conservative, had written the book “How Liberals Make It Harder for Blacks to Succeed.” Virginia Tech issued an apology to Riley and re-invited him but only after incurring public scrutiny.

Other conservative speakers were not so fortunate in receiving an apology. Brandeis University rescinded Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s honorary degree due to her critical statements of Islam, this despite Ali having been a victim of genital mutilation and an attempted forced marriage.

DePaul University canceled conservative commentator Ben Shapiro citing “security concerns.”

Brown University essentially had its hand forced in canceling New York City Police Commissioner Ray Kelly just moments before his scheduled speech. The decision came after protesters yelled for 30 minutes in an effort to stop Kelly from taking the stage. In response to the screaming crowd, a Brown administrator stated, “I have never seen in my 15 years at Brown the inability to have a dialogue.”

The “inability to have a dialogue” is increasingly the norm in academia. Conservative thought is not just unwelcome, oftentimes it is banished altogether. And in many cases, it’s not university administrators dictatorially barring certain speakers but instead weakly kowtowing to militant left-wing students who cannot bear hearing alternative opinions.

America’s bastions of free thought have become hubs of suppression. If you’re on the left, riot in the streets without repercussion. But if you’re on the right, speak at your own peril.

Kayleigh McEnany is a CNN political commentator who recently received her Juris Doctor from Harvard Law School. She graduated from Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service and also studied politics at Oxford University.

The views of contributors are their own and are not the views of The Hill.