Kiera Riley
Arizona Capitol Times
Republican lawmakers called to “gut” public university funding next session during the second meeting of the Ad Hoc Committee on Freedom of Expression at Arizona’s Public Universities today.
The committee convened, this time without Democrats, to again dissect controversy surrounding a February event featuring conservative speakers that led a donor to pull funding from a center housed in Barrett, The Honors College.
Though the majority of testimony focused on the controversy, lawmakers took the time to generally air complaints about alleged suppression of conservative speech on college campuses.
In February, ASU’s T.W. Lewis Center for Personal Development at the Barrett, The Honors College put on an event entitled “Health, Wealth and Happiness,” featuring remarks from Charlie Kirk, founder of Turning Point USA and Dennis Prager, founder of PragerU.
Ahead of the event, 37 out of the 40 faculty at the honors college sent a letter to Barrett Dean Tara Williams condemning Kirk and Prager. Kirk and Prager spoke as planned.
But in April, Tom Lewis, the namesake donor of the T.W. Lewis Center, terminated his donation, and the center and center director Ann Atkinson’s job as a result. Atkinson claimed her firing stemmed from censorship on campus. And Linda Blake, former event operations manager at ASU Gammage, claimed she was fired in retaliation for helping coordinate the event.
Sen. Anthony Kern, R-Glendale, convened the ad hoc committee to retread the controversy in July and called for an internal investigation into the event by ASU.
ASU issued its internal report in September, finding the university had not breached free speech policies and denied allegations from Atkinson and Blake that they were censored or fired in retaliation for the event.
