Leftist students at Syracuse University recently voiced opposition to an event featuring Yeonmi Park, a North Korean defector.
Ahead of the event hosted by the Syracuse College Republicans in partnership with Young America’s Foundation, students destroyed fliers and posted messages critical of Park and the College Republicans in an online forum.
Park, who delivered her speech on Apr. 5, “has criticized concepts like political correctness, trigger warnings and ‘woke culture’ in her career,” according to the student newspaper, The Daily Orange.
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Photos obtained by Campus Reform show fliers for the event torn, thrown to the ground, or covered by other fliers.
In an online forum for Syracuse students, someone posted a photo of a torn flier. Underneath the photo, another user wrote, “The b**ch is a liar and a fraud.”
One post tells the forum to “[r]espect other people’s viewpoints.”
“I don’t respect people [who] are actively trying to take away my (and others [sic]) rights,” another user replies. “I don’t have to respect anyone.”
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Leftist students on other campuses have embraced socialism and communism, two systems criticized by Park.
In Sept. 2022, the Florida State University Students for a Democratic Society hosted “We Won’t Go Back,” a rally “supporting abortion and socialism,” according to Campus Reform.
One speaker at the event stated that “[t]he Capitalist state’s attack on reproductive rights has a very real material basis.”
“They seek to repopulate the class of workers they exploit after over a million have died from COVID-19. U.S. imperialism is in decline,” the speaker continued.
Campus Reform Higher Education Fellow Ilya Buynevich argues in a recent op-ed that students today imagine a “romanticized” version of socialism that differs from the version that existed in the Soviet Union.
Buynevich, a professor at Temple University, also references the Soviet Union’s authoritarianism, which once subjected people to “repressive labor camps and political punishments.”
In authoritarian North Korea, Buynevich told Campus Reform, tearing Park’s fliers is not an activity that students would be allowed to perform.
“So they just proved the speaker’s point,” he writes.
Buynevich says that “[s]tudents who disagreed with the speaker did not have to attend her presentation.”
Campus Reform contacted all relevant parties listed for comment and will update this article accordingly.
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Republished with permission from Campus Reform
