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Because conservative speakers Ben Shapiro and Christina Hoff Sommers haven’t yet agreed to speak at the University of New Mexico, it might be a bit premature to applaud acting UNM president Chaouki Abdallah for, once again, making a stand for free speech. But we’re going to exercise our right to free speech and do it anyway.

A student group at UNM, Students for Socialism, protested outside the administration building Monday after Abdallah declined the group’s request that he ban planned speeches by Shapiro, a former Breitbart News editor-at-large, and Sommers, resident scholar at the conservative think tank American Enterprise Institute who has argued that some campus sexual assault studies exaggerate the problem.

The UNM College Republicans are planning to invite Shapiro to speak, and the Young Americans for Freedom are planning to have Sommers speak. The organizations had requested and received $5,000 each from the Associated Students of UNM, the university’s student government group, to host the speakers, though neither had been booked as of the day of the protest.

Students for Socialism co-president Karina Rodgers says that in a meeting prior to the protest, Abdallah refused to ban the speakers and suggested Rodgers and her comrades seek some accommodation with the groups sponsoring the speakers.

This was not, as Rodgers claims, Abdallah’s shirking of his responsibilities as acting president. Quite the contrary: It is his job to uphold UNM’s policy on free speech, and to foster cooperation and tolerance among the university’s diverse student population.

Abdallah upheld free speech in January when he suspended a $3,400 “security fee” charged to UNM College Republicans, which sponsored a speech by alt-right firebrand Milo Yiannopoulos, a provocateur and former conservative tech writer for Breitbart News.

Though various groups had urged Abdallah to ban Yiannopolous – citing not only his vitriolic speeches, but also the violent protests that erupted at some of his appearances – he allowed the speech to take place amid heightened security. Hundreds of listeners and protesters showed up, but no major incidents were reported by police.

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It’s disconcerting that some at UNM – where the open exchange of ideas should be honored rather than discouraged – fail to grasp the importance of the First Amendment, which protects speech, as well as a free press. By seeking to ban speech they don’t agree with – or even abhor – they effectively surrender their own right to free speech. Similarly, banning free speech that might lead to violence allows those willing to be violent to decide who gets to talk and who doesn’t.

Shapiro and Sommers, like Yiannoplous, should be allowed to speak at UNM, regardless of who likes, or dislikes, what they have to say. This anti-free speech “movement,” which unfortunately seems to be in vogue – especially in academia – brings to mind a quote we all need to hear, or re-hear: “I do not agree with what you have to say, but I’ll defend to the death your right to say it.” That was English author Evelyn Beatrice Hall, in 1906.

That’s how democracy, and free speech, work in America – and how they are working at UNM, despite some misguided efforts to undermine both.

This editorial first appeared in the Albuquerque Journal. It was written by members of the editorial board and is unsigned as it represents the opinion of the newspaper rather than the writers.