Conservative speaker and CRTV host Allie Stuckey, who describes herself as “The Conservative Millennial,” spoke against banning hate speech at an event organized by the Network of Enlightened Women Monday night.
Stuckey is a news host who regularly commentates for Fox News and has a regular show on CRTV. Before the event, Stuckey tweeted that she planned to speak on “free speech and why the Left hates us so much.”
During the event, Stuckey touched on a range of topics, including the University’s recent responses to hate incidents. The Student Assembly and GPSA have both passed resolutions condemning hate speech, and a University-sponsored debate on hate speech restrictions will take place on April 10, as previously reported by The Sun.
According to Stuckey, the idea of implementing any ban on hate speech is “crazy”.
“[There are] people saying that hate speech is not free speech,” Stuckey said. “Yes, it is. And there’s no such thing as hate speech.”
Stuckey continued, asking, “Who gets to define hate speech? Does President Trump get to define [it], or Barack Obama?”
According to Stuckey, “what is at stake … is freedom of thought.” She admonished the “liberal left” for acting, through tech companies, universities and media, as “thought police,” alluding to George Orwell’s 1984.
The reason that American politics is so divided today, according to Stuckey, is not just because of disagreement over individual social issues, but because the nation disagrees fundamentally over “what America is and what America should be.”
Stuckey explained her idea of what a “liberal” America would look like, describing a place where “morality is irrelevant … borders are open … gender is fluid … a place without guns, without individual liberties, without privacy.”
“It takes so much more moral fortitude to be a conservative millennial than a liberal millennial,” Stuckey said. “[Students should] continue to speak up … continue to read thoroughly … and continue to act accordingly.”
The organization that brought Stuckey to campus, NeW, supports “university women who are interested in having conversations about conservative values and diverse political views,” according to its website.
According to Meredith Lord ’20, NeW president, the Cornell chapter has about ten regular members but is “still growing”. Other NeW chapters can be found at Harvard, University of Pennsylvania, Princeton and SUNY New Paltz, according to Vanessa Rivera, campus program associate.
“We have a really large political breadth in our membership,” Lord said after the event. “Our goal was not to bring someone who represents our views precisely, but to bring someone who represents ideas and perspectives that aren’t always heard on campus.”
The event, according to Lord, was not to change anyone’s mind, but “to start a conversation.”