Will Arrington | Published 7 hours ago

Mike Adams, a UNCW professor and conservative columnist, gave a speech in the auditorium in the student union Monday evening.

UNC-Wilmington criminology professor Mike Adams argued that speech codes on college campuses don't do what some students think they do.Adams gave aspeech sponsored bythe UNCCollege Republicans, the Carolina Liberty Foundation and the Carolina Review at the Student Union on Monday.

Adams spoke about his perception that campus speech codes rules that prohibit hate speech across the country are unconstitutional and dangerous. Hesaid he thinks sometimes speech codes backfire and can reinforce negative stereotypesagainst the minorities they are trying to protect.

If there is a negative stereotype thatblacks have a chip on their shoulder, a negative stereotype that women are emotional; if there is an awfulnegative stereotype that someone who is gay has an emotional disturbance, guess what? Comingalong and saying that (speech codes) are going to defend only them, because theyre too weak to makearguments on their own, reinforces the stereotype, Adams said. I think it is an ugly source of bigotry, thesespeech codes.

Adamscited several cases in which these codes werefound to violatethe FirstAmendment, including one case at Georgia Tech wheretwoconservative students objected to the subject matter and coarse language in a performance of theVagina Monologues at their school. These students created a poster that expressed their opinions, andwere found to be in violation of the schools speech code. With the encouragement of Adams, thestudents sued the universityand were in court for two years before a court ruled in their favor.

Adams sued UNC-W in 2007for denying him a promotion, which Adams said was due to his outspoken conservatism.He spent several years in court before the jury ruled in his favor. More recently, he faced astorm of controversy over his denouncement of Nada Merghani, a UNC-W student, as a queer Muslim social justice warrior on a private blog. Adams did not mentionthe incident at the event.

Despite the controversy surrounding Adams, organizers said the eventwas not designed to inspirefurther division.

Carolina Liberty Foundation CEO, Alec Dent, said the event was designed toeducate people about their right to free speech on campus.

Thats certainly been a major issue, I think, over the past year for conservatives and liberals alike, Dent said. Conservatives have really been concerned over the politically correct culture, and liberals have grown concerned about how theyll be able to speak their minds under our currentpresidential administration.

Sophomore WilliamMarshall said he was inspired to attend the event due to his growing concern over censorship andother free speech issues on college campuses, including UNC-Chapel Hill.

I see that its a major issue in the 21st century on college campuses, that the First Amendment isconstantly not well represented, he said. I heard about this talk and I heard about what Dr. Adamsstood for and figured I should go and listen to see what he has to say.

university@dailytarheel.com

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UNC-W professor Mike Adams talks campus free speech and the codes that regulate it - The Daily Tar Heel