Jeff Sessions Holds Speech Decrying Colleges That Stifle Free Speech, Bans Students With Opposing Viewpoints

Jeff Sessions gave a speech on Tuesday decrying those who squash opposing viewpoints on college campuses — and then generated controversy after students with opposing viewpoints were banned from entering the events.

Sessions spoke at Georgetown University, targeting left-leaning students who have protested and shut down events featuring conservative and often controversial viewpoints. In his remarks, Sessions cited an event at Middlebury Vermont featuring an author who wrote a book claiming that African-Americans were genetically inferior to whites. Sessions decried the protests at that event, some of which turned violent.

But Jeff Sessions sparked quite a bit of controversy of his own with the event, as students with opposing viewpoints were barred from attending the events, LawNewz reported. More than 100 students had signed up to attend the event and received invitations, but those were later revoked.

Some of those students said they did not have any protests planned, but just wanted to see what Jeff Sessions had to say.

“It seemed like they were rescinding those invites because they didn’t want any sort of hostile environment, and I can understand not wanting to have a violent environment, but that’s not at all what we were trying to do,” student Greyson Wallis told the Washington Post. “We’re law students. We all just wanted to hear what he had to say and let him know where we differ from his opinions.”

The controversy did not end there. While Sessions slammed college protesters for stifling the viewpoints of those that they disagreed with, Sessions also defended President Donald Trump for calling on NFL owners to fire players who took a knee during the national anthem in protest.

“Well, the president has free speech rights too,” Jeff Sessions said (via the Los Angeles Times).

Jeff Sessions speaks out against safe spaces and says free speech is under attack on college campuses. https://t.co/DwYCQqi67h pic.twitter.com/CB15U4LD9j

— Ian Miles Cheong (@stillgray) September 26, 2017

Trump had initially called protesting players “son of a b***h” and said that the protests were showing disrespect to the American flag and to members of the U.S. military. That led to a surge of NFL players joining in protests on Sunday and Monday, with many entire teams making some sort of demonstration as a show of unity against Trump’s attempts to stifle their protest.

Jeff Sessions is also generating controversy for his department’s legal action against a woman originally arrested for laughing during his Senate confirmation. The Department of Justice is preparing to re-try Desiree Fairooz, who was charged with disorderly and disruptive conduct and demonstrating inside the Capitol and originally convicted by a jury. A judge later threw out the conviction, and the Justice Department announced it planned to re-try her in November.

[Featured Image by Win McNamee/Getty Images]