I find it really hard to believe this article is presenting a fair argument when it makes claims like:<p>&gt; <i>People as different as Condoleezza Rice, a former secretary of state, and Bill Maher, a satirist, have been dissuaded from giving speeches on campuses, sometimes on grounds of safety.</i><p>There are some <i>really good reasons</i> why students protested to prevent the school from paying $35k for a 35-minute speech (Condoleezza&#x27;s speaker fee for the speech in question), such as the fact that many people consider her to be a war criminal (which IIRC was in fact the basis for the protest, that and her role in an administration that promoted torture, not some unsubstantiated claim about feeling unsafe). I was unfamiliar with the Bill Maher speech issue before, but a quick search shows that the protest there was about remarks Bill made on his show that students felt were racist towards Muslims.