



Texas A&M University has confirmed that Richard Spencer, a prominent figure in the white nationalist “alt-right” movement, will be allowed to speak at the university, despite protests against his appearance.

Spencer hosted a widely criticized event in Washington DC earlier this month. At the event attendees gave Hitler salutes while Spencer himself quoted Nazi propaganda and shouted “Hail Trump”. Spencer was invited to appear at Texas A&M by Preston Wiginton, a former student.

Wiginton met with university officials on Monday, in a meeting protesters had hoped might lead to the cancellation of Spencer’s appearance. Almost 10,000 people had signed a petition urging Texas A&M to cancel the 6 December event and denounce Spencer’s “neo-Nazi, white nationalist rhetoric”.

Amy Smith, a spokeswoman for Texas A&M, told the Guardian the event would be held as planned, however. Smith said the university had not invited Spencer, but would not cancel the event for reasons of free speech.

Texas A&M plans to hold its own event at the same time “celebrating the inclusive environment and core values that we hold dear”, Smith said.

Wiginton, who described himself as “sympathetic to nationalists”, told the Guardian he had invited Spencer before the Washington DC event – which highlighted the racism and sexism of some in the “alt-right” movement – but had not considered withdrawing the invitation.

He said he had invited Spencer “primarily because he’s been in the news quite a bit with the Trump election”.

“At American universities the education is so left-leaning that it’s more of an indoctrination than a discussion of ideas,” Wiginton said. “I’ve brought other controversial speakers to A&M on topics that people don’t want to discuss. Things such as immigration. So I just thought it was an opportunity.”

The Southern Poverty Law Center has described Spencer as “a suit-and-tie version of the white supremacists of old, a kind of professional racist in khakis”. He is the president of the National Policy Institute, a white nationalist thinktank, and has proposed a 50-year ban on immigration to the US, to preserve a white-dominant America.

More than 9,800 people signed a petition calling on Texas A&M to cancel the Spencer event. Smith, the university’s senior vice-president and chief marketing and communications officer, described Spencer’s views as “reprehensible” but said the event would go ahead.

“Our students and our faculty, our staff and our alumni are outraged that this is happening to our campus when no one from our campus desires it,” Smith said.

Smith said Wiginton had booked the event space before Texas A&M had realised he would use it to host Spencer. When the university discovered Wiginton planned to host a white nationalist event they were unable to cancel it due to free speech laws. Smith said Texas A&M planned to review its booking policies.

Texas A&M will hold an alternative event at the same time as Wiginton’s event, Smith said, which will be a “celebration” of the university’s “core values and diversity”.

“We’ll have people address the crowd and it’ll be more of an inclusive event focus [rather] than giving credence to some person and their rhetoric that we find reprehensible,” she said.

Wiginton, who attended Texas A&M in 2006-07, said he had invited Spencer as a private citizen. He said he had not yet decided whether the event would be exclusively for university students or would allow members of the public.

Spencer is due to speak at Rudder Tower on the university campus. Wiginton said he did not know how many people would attend, but the space would hold 400 people.

Wiginton said that he had previously hosted an event with Jared Taylor – a white nationalist who also appeared at the “alt-right” event in Washington DC – at Texas A&M in October 2012.

On that occasion 11 people came to see Taylor speak, Wiginton said, after college lecturers asked students not to attend.