According to a survey done by the Harvard Crimson in 2022, 80% of the faculty at Harvard University self-identified as "liberal." Thirty-seven percent self-identified as "very liberal."
The Weekly Column
CURE President Star Parker is a nationally syndicated columnist with Creators syndicate. Her weekly column addresses timely issues of the day and is read by hundreds of thousands of Americans through local newspapers and online sources..
2023
Latest RealClearPolitics presidential match-up polling shows Nikki Haley defeating President Joe Biden by 4.3 points, former Presidential Donald Trump winning by 0.7 points and Gov. Ron DeSantis losing by 1 point.
The last time I wrote about Gaza and Hamas was 13 years ago, in 2010.
Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley got to the heart of the government shutdown fireworks in her appearance on Fox News Sunday.
Recently I wrote about Mesha Mainor, who represents a deep blue district in Atlanta in the Georgia state legislature, announcing that she is switching parties and becoming a Republican.
If there is one overriding theme of the Biden years, it is the systematic degradation of American freedom, pushing the lives and freedom of private citizens aside as government expands and takes over.
Three days after the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, the worst and most murderous attack on the United States in history, President George W. Bush declared "a National Day of Prayer and Remembrance." He went to the National Cathedral and spoke to the nation, casting the horrible event in theological light, saying that the United States must "answer these attacks and rid the world of evil." Bush said we live in a world "of moral design" and he appealed to "Almighty God to watch over our nation."
As I noted in my column of several weeks ago, it's a plus for everyone that Donald Trump will not show for the Republican debate. And now it's official. He's not showing up. Now we can have a debate about issues and not about Trump.
The resounding defeat of Issue 1 in a statewide vote in Ohio is rightly seen as a repudiation of pro-life forces and cause for soul-searching in the movement. The initiative, which would have raised the threshold vote for amending the state constitution, was understood to be about abortion, because a ballot measure is expected in November to amend the state constitution to secure abortion "rights."
With Mike Pence now qualifying for the Republican debate in Milwaukee on Aug. 23, there are now eight candidates qualified to participate. However, one of those eight is former President Donald Trump, who suggests that he is not inclined to show up. "When you have a big lead, you don't do it," noted Trump.
Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie is getting a lot of media — way out of proportion to the impact he has made as a candidate, measured by his low standing in the polls and the very modest amount of money he has raised.
Following the Supreme Court decision finding preferential treatment, i.e., affirmative action, in college admissions unconstitutional, the president of Harvard issued a statement to "Members of the Harvard Community."
Mike Pence is trailing former President Donald Trump by some 50 points in national polling. It's no great revelation that the former vice president needs some major breakthroughs to be considered a serious and viable candidate for 2024. But all is possible, and here is one approach.
In 2003, the U.S. Supreme Court, in Lawrence v. Texas, found Texas' anti-sodomy law unconstitutional. This is a free country, the Court proclaimed, and individuals can engage in whatever private consensual sexual activity that they wish.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has announced he's in. He's running for president.
The Congressional Budget Office has just released its latest projection for the next ten years.
I was proud and moved to participate in opening ceremonies, at the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial in Washington, D.C., commemorating National Police Week.
President Joe Biden has made his bid for a second term official, and the first big news following the announcement is his latest approval rating released by Gallup. It shows Biden's approval reaching a new low in his presidency — 37%.
Whether we're speaking about a nation, or an individual, absence of self-discipline is a sign of weakness. The only words that capture fiscal reality in our country today are "profligate" and "undisciplined."
Republican Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina has announced the formation of an exploratory committee for his candidacy for president.
It is a unique and special time now because Christians, Jews and Muslims all are engaged in major holidays of religious contemplation and renewal. Christians with Holy Week and Easter, Jews with Passover, and Muslims with Ramadan.
Historian Arnold Toynbee observed "an autopsy of history would show that all great nations commit suicide." It's hard not to think about this reading the results of the latest Wall Street Journal-NORC poll, appearing under the headline "America Pulls Back From Values That Once Defined It."
Widely reported in the press is that President Joe Biden called Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to express his concern about judicial reforms that are currently being considered in Israel.
Shock waves are rippling through the country after the announcement of the second largest bank failure in the country's history last week — Silicon Valley Bank.
President Joe Biden announced he will not veto a resolution passed by the Republican-controlled House which overturns a new District of Columbia crime reform law, assuming the resolution passes in the Senate.
The 2024 presidential race gets more exciting each day. Now 37-year-old entrepreneur businessman Vivek Ramaswamy has entered the race as the newest Republican candidate.
The Republican Party's newest presidential candidate, former South Carolina Gov. and U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley, introduced herself by showcasing her roots as a child of immigrants.
Per CNN and other media outlets, when Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis ran his first campaign for Congress in 2012, he expressed support for "privatizing" Social Security.
The Republican-controlled House has voted to boot Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., off the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
Once again, the nation is traumatized by horrible video of police brutally beating to death a Black man. Need I note the victim was Black? Would we be less or more traumatized if the victim were white? But the rule seems to be the victims are Black.
As tensions about raising the nation's $31.4 trillion debt ceiling build, the headline that should be flashing in front of every American is that our country is not working.
Friday, Jan. 20, 2023, pro-life Americans will March for Life in Washington, D.C. Hundreds of thousands will march, as they have marched since 1973. But this year, it is different.
Amid the post-mortems of the four-day, 15-vote marathon to elect Kevin McCarthy House speaker, I remind readers of the headline of my Nov. 30 column, "Kevin McCarthy, a Republican Leader for Complex Times."
By now, just about everyone has heard about the massive campaign of lies that Republican George Santos fabricated that just got him elected to a congressional seat from New York.
2022
There are plenty of post-mortems about Raphael Warnock's defeat of Republican candidate Herschel Walker in the runoff for the Senate seat in Georgia. But let's ask why voters, particularly Black voters, would send Warnock to represent them for another six years in the U.S. Senate.
The Respect for Marriage Act, codifying same-sex marriage as federal law, already decided as such by the Supreme Court in the Obergefell decision in 2015, has now passed the Senate. If it passes in the House, President Joe Biden will sign it into law. Let's take a moment and consider what is going on.
Republicans are rightly wondering what to expect from the upcoming House of Representatives controlled by their party.
Conservatives are chomping at the bit to move a hardcore conservative agenda.
Among the key headlines from the 2022 election were gains by Republicans among minority voters.
According to the AP VoteCast survey, Republican House candidates got 14% of the Black vote, almost twice the 8% of the Black vote that Republicans captured in 2020 and 2018.
President Joe Biden's $400 billion 2022 election bribe — also known as student loan forgiveness — has been now stopped in its tracks on two fronts.
The Supreme Court just heard arguments in the case Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard and Students for Fair Admissions v. University of North Carolina. It's about affirmative action — universities using race and ethnicity in their admissions policies.
As Democrats see the likelihood of the House and the Senate shifting to Republican control, they have rolled out their biggest gun to try to minimize the damage.
A supporter of my organization sent a video he made driving around in downtown Los Angeles.
As November elections approach, the glaring and deeply troubling headline I see is Americans becoming increasingly alienated from their own country.
Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and his political activist wife, Ginni, are a high-profile Washington conservative power couple.
Republicans are gearing up for elections in November by drawing a clear line in the sand between their party and Democrats. Republicans have rolled out what they call Commitment to America. And this is exactly what it's about.
Yeshiva University, the nation's only orthodox Jewish university, has been sued by Yeshiva University gay students for refusing to sanction an LGBTQ club. A New York State court ruled in favor of the students, and now Yeshiva University has been dealt another setback by the Supreme Court. The Supremes, to whom Yeshiva University appealed, refused to block the state court decision requiring that the university allow the LGBTQ club to operate.
New polling data from Gallup show Americans are not having an easy time through this period of rising prices. According to Gallup, 56% of Americans say now that rising prices are causing severe or moderate hardship. Drilling down, we see that the hardship is not shared equally.
President Joe Biden travelled to Philadelphia, to Independence Hall, the place where the nation's founders signed the Declaration of Independence, to make his case for "The Continued Battle for the Soul of the Nation."
No sooner had President Joe Biden announced his plan for student loan debt forgiveness — $10,000 for non-Pell grant recipients and $20,000 for Pell Grant recipients — the president of the NAACP was complaining that it should be more than twice as much. At least $50,000.
A vibrant, free and democratic nation thrives with differences of opinion. But there is a difference between differences of opinion on specific issues of policy and fracturing of discourse because of absence of common ground of values and principles. For a nation to function, there must be some common denominator of shared values and principles.
At the same time that we're expanding our army of tax collectors, we continue to expand government and spending at an even faster pace. The Congressional Budget Office has just released its latest Long-Term Budget Outlook, and here we get a broader picture of the problem.
At a time when we have so badly lost our way, when our nation's future is uncertain because the pillars of limited government and family have been so badly compromised and lost, we need leaders who see our problems clearly and will not waiver in leadership to get our nation back on track.
Democrats want big government, a lot of spending and taxation, the former of which we are now paying for in inflation, so the new strategy of Democrats is to now claim that spending and taxes reduce inflation.
The moral consequence of the Dobbs decision is to secure the notion that where, in the preamble of the U.S. Constitution, it says its aim is to "secure the blessings of liberty," that what the Constitution protects is our responsibility to make the right choices. Choice is not the ultimate end, but what we choose.
New polling from Pew Research and from NY Times/Siena College, released a few days apart, cast similarly dismal pictures regarding the popularity of President Joe Biden. Overall approval for Biden from NY Times/Siena College stands at 33% and from Pew 37%.
The Gallup polling organization seems to serve up endlessly bleak news about how Americans feel about God and country. I wrote recently about their report of the historically low percentage of Americans that say they believe in God. Now Gallup reports that a historically low number of Americans believe in ourselves and our country.
With the Supreme Court concluding one of the most historic and consequential terms in its history, it leaves in its wake consequences and implications for the direction of our country. One very important result may well be a movement of Black and Hispanic voters to the right.
When we lose appreciation for the sanctity of life, along with this we lose the sense of sanctity of behavior that brings life to the world. Marriage and sex become no longer responsible expressions of love and creation but expressions of egoism and self-gratification of the moment.
Per a new report from Gallup, the percentage of Americans now saying they believe in God is the lowest since they first started doing the survey. In 2022, 81% of Americans say they believe in God.
President Joe Biden spoke at the Port of Los Angeles the other day and addressed the issue foremost on the minds of Americans today — inflation. And in the spirit of a tried and true liberal, he blamed everyone in the world for a problem that he is responsible for.
As the House Select Committee to Investigate the Jan, 6 Attack on the United States Capitol starts public hearings, we must ask what motivates those on the committee. Is the sole concern the ideals of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States? Or is it to get media to attack and undermine political opponents?
George Washington warned the nation in his farewell address that there is no freedom without faith, tradition and personal responsibility. The same liberals that have helped wipe this out now want more government in the way of new gun laws to solve what is a cultural and spiritual crisis.
I am so pleased and proud that the first annual edition of the "State of Black America" (Encounter Books), published by my organization, CURE, Center for Urban Renewal and Education, in conjunction with the Claremont Institute has just been released.
Recent remarks by Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, noting the institutional damage caused by the leak of Justice Samuel Alito's opinion on Roe v. Wade, have gotten exhaustive coverage in the press. But, not surprisingly, the venue where Thomas made these remarks has gotten little attention by these same journalists.
As the left goes berserk over the leaked Samuel Alito opinion pointing to the overturning of Roe v. Wade, we should consider that we'll never know the gifts of the 63 million children obliterated since the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision.
A child growing up in America today looks around and finds himself or herself in a nation where debt is larger than the entire economy, and still growing. But just as inflation shows that the costs of fiscal irresponsibility cannot be hidden, so the costs of teaching our youth that personal responsibility is irrelevant cannot be hidden. It manifests in the destructive behavior we see now.
If anyone doubts that The New York Times is about a political agenda rather than delivering truth, they should compare how the Times has covered the McCarthy affair to the story about Hunter Biden's laptop.
The crises of recent years tend to erase from memory those that preceded them. One, as you may recall, was the financial collapse of 2008 — a collapse deemed by many as the worst since the Great Depression. That collapse swept into power a government like the one we have now — the White House and both houses of Congress controlled by Democrats.
As our nation leans increasingly to the left, as our most basic values — now called conservative values — are being pushed out the door, while they are displaced by the chaos of moral relativism, some bold individuals — in this case, the proprietors of Gibson's Bakery in Oberlin, Ohio — refuse to be intimidated and concede.
A recent report from the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis focuses on the disparate impact of inflation on different communities, causing the most damage to low-income Americans. According to the report, although one number for inflation is reported nationally, different households do not equally take the brunt of this.
For years, liberals attempted to diminish Thomas as a lackey of the late justice Antonin Scalia. Now, as Thomas shines as the court's leading conservative voice, they want to diminish him as a lackey of his wife.
The distorted rhetoric — should I say lies? — labeling Florida's legislation about parental rights in public schools as, "Don't say gay" demonstrates the hypocrisy of LGBTQ activism.
Russian President Vladimir Putin is an evil man. A murderer and a thief. He chose to advance his outrageous and murderous agenda because he understood that opposite him in the world stood weakness and moral relativism, not strength and moral clarity.
As Americans watch events unfold in Ukraine, we must refocus on what is going on in our own country. If we lose a sense of the importance and relevance of Reagan's words as they apply at home, we surely will not know how to relate to events as they transpire in the rest of the world.
A new report from Pew Research shows that the sharpest drop in approval for President Joe Biden is among the Democratic Party's most loyal and consistent supporters — Black protestants. Other polls among all Black voters tell the same story.
Some want to tell us that slavery is not just a stain on American history but that it defines America and American history. That America is a nation founded in racism and evil and that the task today is to reinvent and recreate the nation. This is what "wokeness" and DEI — diversity, equity and inclusion programming — is about.
Sarah Bloom Raskin, whom the president has nominated to be vice chairman of supervision of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, doesn't see her potential new role merely as supervising a smooth-running economy and banking system. She sees her role as prophet and navigator of America's future.
May we ask if ever there might be justification for taking race and gender into consideration as deciding factors in making a Supreme Court nomination? I believe we can answer this question by looking at the one Black justice on the Supreme Court, Associate Justice Clarence Thomas.
Research indeed shows benefits from a well-structured pre-K program. But absent are solid conclusions of lasting benefits. Most likely to benefit are low-income, disadvantaged children. But providing pre-K investment and then sending these children off to the broken K-12 public schools in these same neighborhoods is ridiculous.
With all the supposed concerns of woke culture, the truth is that respect between people — whether between races and ethnicities or between men and women — begins with respect for the sanctity of life.
In the name of racial justice, our race campaigns today are defined by selection and placement based on race, based on the color of skin, and not based on the content of character, as King implored the nation to do.
As we await findings and conclusions of the House Select Committee on the Jan. 6 attack, let's take a moment and do our own soul-searching about what is going on. The House Select Committee is engaged in Washington's favorite pastime — looking for whom to blame. The sidelight of this pastime is the pretense that things that are very complicated can be made clear and simple.
2021
As Americans allow themselves to be convinced that government is the answer to their lives, they become more likely to abandon faith and religion, which provide the light and principles for individuals to take control of their own lives.
Senator Manchin has been a one-man show in the Democratic Party, standing often in solitude, holding feet-to-the-fire of his president and his party's leadership, pushing back on the massive and irresponsible spending avalanche in the Build Back Better act. Now, Manchin has slammed the door, saying he can't vote for the bill, effectively killing it.
Nikki Haley, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, has served up a kind of Christmas present to the nation in the form of a new comprehensive policy book, issued by her organization Stand for America, serving up conservative solutions for our nation's many challenges — domestic and foreign.
The Biden administration is hosting, in upcoming days, a "Summit for Democracy," in which 110 nations worldwide have been invited to participate in this global virtual event. The Biden administration lists on the White House website as among its priorities "Restoring America's Global Standing." This summit will accomplish exactly the opposite.
The Supreme Court will hear this week Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization. At issue is the law in Mississippi that bans abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy. A decision finding the Mississippi law constitutional will fundamentally change the abortion regime in our country, defined by Roe v. Wade since 1973.
Democrats are screaming because Republican Sen. John Kennedy suggested that Saule Omarova, whom President Joe Biden has nominated to head the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency — the nation's top banking regulator — might be a communist.
As Democrats regroup to try to pass their $2 trillion Build Back Better Act, pressure grows for shining the light of fiscal responsibility on all this. Given President Joe Biden's crashing approval ratings, there is some hint that the American people smell a rat.
Democrats have just been reprimanded by voters, with the upset victory of Republican candidate and political novice Glenn Youngkin in the governor's race in Virginia, an almost upset victory in New Jersey by Republican gubernatorial candidate Jack Ciattarelli, who came within 2% of the vote of winning, and revolts in school board elections nationwide, pushing back against critical race theory and COVID-19 government interventions.
Rep. Cori Bush, a Democrat left-wing "squad" member in the House, attacked Democrat Sen. Joe Manchin for his opposition to the multitrillion-dollar Build Back Better Act. Manchin is "anti-Black, anti-child, anti-woman and anti-immigrant," according to Bush because of his opposition to this megaspending welfare bill. If Bush wants to identify politicians hurting Blacks, children, women and immigrants, she needn't go further than to look in the mirror.
The joke goes that a slip of the tongue for a politician means that they accidentally said what they actually believe. Now Democrats are trying to clean up the mess created by Virginia Democratic candidate for governor, Terry McAuliffe, when he said in a debate on Sept. 28, "I don't think parents should be telling schools what they should teach." McAuliffe's 5-point lead over his opponent, Republican Glenn Youngkin, who has made parental control in education a central issue in his campaign, has disappeared.
Despite being a politician all his life, and never having worked in a blue-collar job, President Joe Biden declared, "I'm a union man," when he announced his presidential campaign at a Teamsters union hall in Pittsburgh in April 2019. What our president really loves is big government and political power, and there is no more reliable money trough for Democrats than unions.
Cancel culture has reared its ugly head once again, and this time in a new and unprecedented way. A lecture by a physicist was canceled at one of America's premier institutions of science, MIT, for reasons having nothing to do with the subject of the lecture. The lecture was canceled not because of its scientific content but because of the politically incorrect views on diversity of the scientist scheduled to give the lecture.
Going back to the first term of President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933, the party of first-term presidents gained seats in House midterm congressional elections only twice. Karl Rove reminded readers a few months ago in his Wall Street Journal column that, since World War II, the average loss of House seats of the party of each first-term president in congressional midterms is 28.
Perry's work is always illuminating because the data shows how much healthier the country is socially and economically than anyone would believe who listens to the naysayers on the left, who want to transform America into a giant, socialist welfare state. Contrary to what we hear from Democrats and the left-leaning media, Americans continue to move up and earn more.
Last week, Supreme Court Associate Justice Clarence Thomas arrived at the University of Notre Dame to speak about the Declaration of Independence. Speaking invitations like this that Thomas accepts are few and far between. Anyone who cares about our country and listens to this address will wish that he would agree to speak more.
Most of it is to build the socialist paradise that Senate Budget Chairman Bernie Sanders and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi dream about: new household entitlements, new employer mandates, Medicare benefits expansion and all kinds of corporate welfare subsidies in the name of the Green New Deal and industrial policy spending.
It could be that California's ethnic minority voters are waking up to the truth that the America that Elder is talking about — lower taxes and regulations, free markets, education competition — is what they need, rather than the left-wing progressivism of rich white liberals.
Why have so many in corporate America signed off on left-wing dogma that American principles — principles of protection of life, of liberty, of property — are the problem rather than the solution?
Maybe today, as the United States withdraws from Afghanistan in despair, shame and confusion, and as we note 20 years since the loss of 2,977 American lives to terror in our homeland, there will be greater appreciation for doing some national soul-searching.
Most critical is to appreciate that we cannot succeed in defending our nation abroad if we are not clear at home who we are.
Unfortunately, the whole business of racial identification and categorization is not about advancing the quality of the human condition and human dignity but about progressive politics.
Can we really function as a society and as a nation while turning away from the most central issue that any society faces — awe of the mystery of life?
Ben & Jerry's, noted for its ice cream made from "contented cows," has produced not such contented consumers in many circles following its announcement to stop selling its ice cream in Israel's West Bank and in East Jerusalem.
Since the new wave of race consciousness that has been sweeping our country, precipitated by the graphic video of the killing of George Floyd by police officer Derek Chauvin, something very strange has happened.
The Poor People’s Campaign has nothing to say about the data connecting family breakdown and abortion to poverty. So, when they storm the Senate over the next four weeks with bogus claims, we hope our elected officials will heed other voices.
It is one of the unfortunate ironies coming out of the Biden administration that, with all the obsession about so-called equity, policies they are putting forth will only hurt the very low-income Americans they pretend to want to help.
If half the country disagrees with the other half about "core American values," what exactly can we expect public schools receiving federal funds to teach regarding the nature and purpose of our Constitution or about our nation's history?
Catholic Social Services sued the city of Philadelphia, through the Philadelphia Archdiocese, for canceling its 50-year contract with the Catholic social services agency because it refuses to certify same-sex couples as foster families for the purpose of foster care. The Supreme Court ruled in favor of CSS, finding that Philadelphia violated its First Amendment protections — and the decision is justifiably getting mixed reviews.
If the Republican Party becomes a big tent of moral relativism, who will fight for transmission of the values that sustain life and freedom?
In an exclusive television interview marking the 6th anniversary of the day Dylann Roof murdered nine people and wounded thirteen others in a racist rampage of an African-American church in Charleston, South Carolina, Star Parker speaks with Senator Tim Scott (R-SC) who was instrumental in helping the community come together in prayer and forgiveness after this horrific incident.
Listening to all the rhetoric in the popular media, you would think America is the most unfair, racist nation in the world. You would think that Black Americans are uniformly living in oppression and poverty, with no hope for the future, save the federal government arriving on the scene to their rescue — but the facts tell a far different story than what we are hearing.
The persistence of problems in Black communities stems from federal policies that pretend to fight the sin of racism with the sins of the destruction of life and family.
This dream-team Republican ticket in Virginia must run on principles and patriotism and against the moral and fiscal profligacy that is taking us down the path to moral and fiscal bankruptcy.
Subsidizing blame and irresponsibility produces squalor. A culture of hard work and personal responsibility, despite a world that is often unclear and often seems unfair and unjust, produces miracles like the modern state of Israel.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that births in the USA reached another historic low in 2020. For the sixth consecutive year, the birth rate dropped — this time by 4%. The average annual drop in the five previous years was 2%. How do we turn this around?
Senator Tim Scott spoke truth. America is about freedom under God. Achieving this is today’s great challenge.
Policing should be a local issue, not a national one. But civil rights is a national issue, and qualified immunity should be reformed.
The president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Alexis McGill Johnson, has used The New York Times as a confessional to fess up to the racist history of Planned Parenthood's founder, Margaret Sanger. But Planned Parenthood has always been in denial about these very ugly truths.
New York should be a poster child for the nation about what not to do, about the path we should not take.
Public policy should not be focused on inequality. Public policy should be focused on assuring conditions that allow every citizen to maximize their individual potential and ability to participate to the greatest extent possible in the economic growth and opportunity that is being created.
The moral chaos that defines what those on the left today conceive to be freedom, has little to do with the vision of freedom of the Christian men and women who founded and built the nation.
CURE recommends reforming Social Security by transforming it into a system of ownership through personally owned retirement accounts to replace the current pay-as-you-go government taxation and spending program.
What is great news for normal people is taken as bad news by politicians on the left who want to run our lives.
When we are talking about life and death, we are talking about life's meaning and how that plays out in our culture.
We know that the key to the success of our great American economy is freedom and competition. It is impossible to consider our nation free when parents have no choice regarding how to educate their children. We need education choice.
Homeless policy must be two-pronged. One, we need local law enforcement regimes that discourage rather than encourage homelessness. Two, we need social-welfare policies that get to the core of the problem.
It was the right move by the Trump administration to eliminate this inappropriate assault on the most basic American freedom to choose where and how one wants to live.
2020
Shutting down dialogue, shutting down free and open exchange of ideas, is exactly what Black Lives Matter wants.