The Silenced Students in the “Free Speech” Debate

The nearly 650 comments on the Young America’s Foundation’s April 6 tweet are laced with venom. The post is a video of Lukas Tucker, a first-year student at the University of North Carolina–Greensboro (UNCG) who filmed a peacekeeping message to the university community ahead of Ben Shapiro’s visit to campus.

“This is an illness.”

“Another fatherless child.”

“Freak.”

Shapiro was invited by UNCG’s chapter of Young Americans for Freedom (YAF), an affiliate of the Young America’s Foundation, after the group faced backlash for posting a transphobic Shapiro quote on their social media. In his video, Tucker, who is transgender, warns that engaging with YAF could do more harm than good—“It creates an ‘us’ vs. ‘them’ narrative that puts the Young Americans for Freedom against transgender people,” he explains. “It also validates their opinions and gives them a platform in which they can spread transphobic nonsense.”