'Our students were not picking a fight. They were attempting to implement the cancel culture that has become all too prevalent on university campuses,' he said in an op-ed posted on the university's website on Wednesday.
The president acknowledged the school had received communication from students ahead of Zaslav’s appearance, in which students vocalized their dissent over the school’s choice in speaker. But Brown says the “virtually identical protest emails” ahead of commencement featured the word cancel with a hashtag attached, indicating to his office an “aim to prevent Mr. Zaslav from speaking.”
Brown went on to call the students’ responses “appallingly coarse and deliberately abusive” to Zaslav, adding that they were “entitled to attend Commencement because they were being awarded degrees that they earned from Boston University.” “They sought to make a statement, out of passionate conviction, but in the moment, they forgot that in a liberal democracy, personal autonomy and freedom of speech come with responsibilities,” he continued. “One responsibility, particularly in an institution for which freedom of speech is the oxygen that sustains our mission, is respect for the speech rights of others. The deliberate effort to silence a speaker is at odds with this fundamental value.
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