Author’s note: I gave the following speech on February 7, 2020, while at a university Student Government Association (SGA) meeting, whose members debated allowing the UCF College Republicans to spend nearly $20,000 on booking controversial speaker Ben Shapiro. Parts of my speech were later cited by those in favor of booking Shapiro & two SGA Senators. Also, the president of the UCF College Republicans complimented me on a well-written speech.
Good evening, everyone. My name is Kurt Ramos and my pronouns are he/him/his, if you were wondering.
I personally am not advocating for Ben Shapiro to be given a platform at the largest public university in these rather divided states.
Mr. Shapiro may be correct in famously stating that “Facts don’t care about your feelings”; but, he and the rhetoric he espouses overlooks an undeniable fact — that people’s feelings do care about the facts.
In an era where the facts of life are very publicly denied or obfuscated from their due objectivity by elected officials, Mr. Shapiro has contributed to division and increased polarization against minority communities — including his own ethnicity — within the so-called political discourse.
Ben Shapiro’s speeches and tweets have been cited as inspiration by the perpetrators of last March’s Muslim massacre in New Zealand, where fifty-one innocent people of faith were murdered, as well as the May 2018 synagogue shooting in Quebec, where six innocent people of faith were murdered alongside nineteen injured.
Free speech is not free when it violates the free speech and fundamental human rights of others. We can agree to disagree on certain issues concerning politics, but only to the extent that our lives aren’t seen as an existential threat.
Regrettably, Mr. Shapiro does not discuss nor debate his arguments in good faith. With his facade of intellectualism, he actually promotes anti-intellectualism by over-generalizing the
identities of feminists, the liberal-minded, the Palestinian people and, yes, college students who dare express themselves with blue hair.
He has been accused of homophobia and trans-phobia, even by other conservative thought leaders like Dave Rubin.
Additionally, he has caricatured millions of African-Americans, on many occasions, as all being thugs who deserve increased brutality from law enforcement and the State. Such unjust treatment and erasure of a peaceful community, like any other, is what is happening also to Palestinians within the Israeli nation-state.
He has even accused other Jews, who do not share his Orthodox Judaism beliefs, of being “fascists” — he publicly called them such when some Jews voted for former President Obama’s re-election.
To give Ben Shapiro not only the opportunity to speak, but to host the kickoff event for the Young Americans Foundation (and tout his new book), would violate the safety of the groups I’ve mentioned. Given that we’re living in an election year, with many of us facing unprecedented stakes, his presence at our campus would make the 5 UCF Creed tenets (of Community, Creativity, Excellence, Integrity, & Scholarship) less meaningful. After hearing him speak and get interviewed on YouTube, I am convinced that this $20,000 of our tuition money should instead go towards a different public speaker from a religious or political minority, or towards more campus-led inter-sectional initiatives.
Therefore, I urge you, SGA, to vote no on letting Ben Shapiro speak on our campus, at the financial cost of $20,000 of our tuition money, and at the potential safety cost of my friends. Thank you.
Additional note: The motion to allow the UCF College Republicans to spend nearly $20,000 of UCF students’ tuition monies was approved by the SGA. However, the planned Ben Shapiro speaking event has been indefinitely postponed due to the coronavirus pandemic.
