Duke Shuts Down Motherhood Event
Duke University has struck again! A Students for Life group booked a space at the campus Women’s Center for a presentation on the challenging roles of motherhood as part of their “Week for Life” campaign. Apparently, the Women's Center was founded in a spirit that "welcomes discordant viewpoints from varied experiences." -- except if that view point is a pro-life one.
The University decided to shut down the whole event in order to save their students from the pro-life "trauma".
via FIRE -
Duke University’s Women’s Center has canceled an event about motherhood because the sponsor was engaging in pro-life expression elsewhere on campus. A Women’s Center representative told Duke Students for Life (DSFL) that “we have a problem” and an ideological “conflict” with the event, which was supposedly canceled to protect Duke women from encountering the event during the group’s “traumatizing” pro-life “Week for Life.” The group’s president has turned to the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) for help.
“Duke appears to have an unwritten but officially enforced stance regarding abortion that has resulted in pro-life groups being shut out of the Women’s Center,” said FIRE Vice President Robert Shibley. “This treatment is a deeply hypocritical violation of the Women’s Center’s promise that it ‘welcomes discordant viewpoints from varied experiences.’”
As part of a “Week for Life” series of events held at Duke over March 15-19, DSFL had reserved a Women’s Center space for a “Discussion with a Duke Mother” on March 18. A Duke student and mother was to speak about motherhood and the challenges of being in both roles. But the day before the event, the reservation was abruptly canceled in a voicemail to the group.
Meeting with the group on March 18, Duke Women’s Center Gender Violence Prevention Specialist Martin Liccardo said that because the event was associated with the Week for Life and DSFL, the event could not be held at the Women’s Center.
Liccardo told the group that the prospect of holding a pro-life event in the Women’s Center during Week for Life was too upsetting for some students: “We had a very strong reaction from students in general who use our space who said this was something that was upsetting and not OK. So based on that, we said, OK, we are going to respond to this and stop the program.”
Of course, Duke University can create whatever kind of ludicrous rules it wants, but when Motherhood is frowned upon because it may be viewed as too pro-life it may be time to check the moral barrings.
Am I reading to much into this story? Sound off in the comments.
About the Author
Ian Kelly is the "arm chair pundit" at Moral Outcry. He has worked full time for Bound4LIFE since 2007. His other responsibilities include local chapter development and new media communications. Besides being a political junkie, he enjoys history, sci-fi, super heroes and grilling.
