Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis defended his call to ban pro-Palestinian groups from Florida state colleges Sunday, after one of his Republican presidential primary opponents, Vivek Ramaswamy, slammed the demand as “a shameful political ploy.”
“It’s unconstitutional. It’s utter hypocrisy for someone who railed against left-wing cancel culture,” Ramaswamy posted on X (formerly Twitter) Thursday, alleging that it violates students’ right to free speech.
DeSantis held firm Sunday.
“This is not cancel culture. This group, they themselves said, in the aftermath of the Hamas attack, that they don’t just stand in solidarity that they are part of this Hamas movement,” DeSantis said during an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
They are welcome to say whatever they like, but they are not guaranteed help from the government to actively spread their message.
They aren’t banned or even kicked out, they just can’t use school resources to advance their organization. They can still gather, they can still speak openly, they can still get their education.
Reading more deeply, this seems reasonable enough. I’ve seen a lot of conservatives equating “don’t kill innocent Palestinians” with “Hamas supporter”, but in this specific case they went out of their way to mention there’s room for that but not room for “Hamas is our movement”.
The world seems to have broken when there are obviously bad guys on both sides of the conflict…