Dillard University President Walter Kimbrough argued that historically black colleges succeed because they don’t enroll “racist” students.

Kimbrough, the president of Dillard University, a historically black university in New Orleans, Louisiana, came under fire this week after he said that historically black colleges succeed because they exclude racists from their student body and faculty.

“I think now many black high school students are experiencing more overt racism, so they are looking for places where race is not a day to day issue to be navigated,” Kimbrough said in a comment to The College Fix. “At an HBCU, students can just be students and not worry about the politics of race.”

“I think many have worked to be more inclusive, but those schools still enroll students who don’t have the same value of diversity and inclusion,” Kimbrough added. “A university may do everything right but they will still enroll racist students, faculty and staff who will make the climate uncomfortable for black students.”

Despite this, Kimbrough has received praise for his willingness to defend free expression on college campuses. A column published by Forbes in October juxtaposed Kimbraugh’s protection of free expression principles against that of institutions like Middlebury College, which infamously allowed its students to derail an event featuring Charles Murray.

On March 2, 2017, as is now notorious, Middlebury College students, few, if any of whom had bothered to read sociologist Charles Murray’s writings, nonetheless shouted him down on grounds of his alleged racism and “classism.” A mob of students and outsiders hurled distinguished professor of political science Allison Stanger to the ground, causing a brain concussion and a neck injury that took months to heal, for daring to hold a discussion with Dr. Murray. Yet not long before, on November 1, 2016, Dillard University, an HBCU founded in 1930, hosted the Louisiana senatorial candidates debate, and since former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard David Duke made it onto the ballot, he, too, qualified for the debate at Dillard. There were protests and arrests, but the event proceeded as planned.

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