Of course with this in mind, it's significantly harder to oppose Trump's proposal to defund Berkeley (or whichever college). Why is taxpayer support for a political advocacy group somehow sacrosanct?
The issue is the unwillingness of those attending to take advantage of the full diversity of views and life experiences that university life has to offer.
Most importantly though you are taking a simplistic all or nothing approach where any (perceived) transgression disqualifies the entire history of knowledge seeking and sharing of ideas.
Socrates was also a professional troll. Should he (if he were not mortal) be barred from universities?
As for Milo, I've never watched him until yesterday. I saw a bunch of journalists claiming he supported pedophilia, yet refusing to quote him or even link to the video. So I figured I was being mislead (I was!) and watched the actual video.
While he is full of hyperbole, flamboyance and ridiculousness, he's also making valid points mixed in with it. For example, one of his major points is that the left wing identity politics is just a rhetorical weapon, not a real principle - that's why a "flaming queer" like him isn't allowed to hide behind it.
LOL @ Socrates being a professional troll. I feel like I'm being trolled when I read stuff like this...
So you were citing the treatment of someone whom "who had never watched until yesterday" in support of your claim about Universities and open acceptance of ideas. That's a pretty good summation of how ideologically driven your arguments are.
It sure didn't stop him from trying to hide behind "being a child abuse victim" to excuse his behavior. But that just makes him a hypocrite, what makes him a troll is that whatever "valid points" he has serves the interest of provocation, not discussion.
I favor free speech, free thought and open inquiry even for ideas that I feel are harmful or dishonest. I want universities to be bastions of these values.
For example, although feminists are far more dishonest than Milo and far more hostile to open inquiry and free thought, I still favor allowing them to speak at universities. They should even have the right to criticize specific individuals (like Milo was going to) and argue against the very freedom that allows them to speak.
My knowledge of a specific speaker is completely irrelevant, because the argument I'm making has nothing whatsoever to do with who the speaker is or the content of his talk.
I've been on a bunch of these little committees. It's a combo of who has a bee in their bonnet, what speakers fit the schedule, and who will talk for free or for cheap if we can't get funding for high-profile speakers. We've managed to get Nobel Prize winners because they were in town for another speaking engagement at the right time and we could broker a deal. You seem to imply that there's a big institution-wide agreement to serve some institution-wide set of interests. On a mundane level, this simply isn't true. You're seeing the outside of a bunch of misfit cats scrapping for meager amounts of cash and drawing some pretty grand conclusions. Patterns emerge out of this system but they're not, in general, intentional or under the control of any single entity.