Penn State Administrators, Student Groups Denounce Controversial Alt-Right Commentator Scheduled to Speak on Campus

Updated at 3:30 p.m. on Oct. 27: This story has been updated with comment from a university spokesperson on the placement of an advertisement for the event.

Penn State officials and student groups this week denounced a controversial alt-right political commentator who is scheduled to speak at the University Park campus next week.

Milo Yiannopoulos, a British media personality and provocateur, is set to speak about “free speech, faith, conversion therapy, hair style, and more” on Nov. 3 at 101 Thomas Building, according to the website for the event, which has a tagline of “Pray the gay away.”

Uncensored America, a student organization founded at Penn State in 2020 and “dedicated to fighting for freedom of speech,” is hosting Yiannopoulos, who the Anti-Defamation League called “a misogynistic, racist, xenophobic, transphobic troll who is extremely good at getting people to pay attention to him.”

In a joint statement issued on Monday night, three top Penn State administrators condemned Yiannopoulos and his “history of remarks that disparage various groups, including the LGBTQ community,” They wrote, however, that Uncensored America has a constitutional right to host the event on campus and the university cannot stop it.

“His past presentations on the nation’s college campuses have been antithetical to Penn State’s values, and we share the profound dismay others have already expressed in response to his forthcoming appearance here,” Vice President and General Counsel Steve Dunham, Vice President for Student Affairs Damon Sims and Vice Provost for Educational Equity Marcus Whitehurst wrote. “Even the posters produced by Uncensored America to promote next week’s event, which now are displayed in the HUB-Robeson Center and elsewhere on campus, are troubling and worrisome — though consistent with University policy and Constitutional protections.

“Yet as offensive and hurtful as Yiannopoulos’s comments have been and are likely to be again, and despite our own abhorrence for such statements and the promotional tactics used, Uncensored America has the undeniable Constitutional right to sponsor this presentation on our campus. The University lacks the right to do anything to stop it.”

Posters for the event, which include the “Pray the gay away tagline,” began appearing on campus this week. One in the HUB Robeson Center was placed on a pole directly below a poster for LGBTQ+ History Month.

Penn State spokesperson Lisa Powers said that departments and recognized student organizations can reserve sign spaces through an online system and HUB Event Management staff place them on a first-come, first-served basis, refilling slots created by outgoing posters with the next reservation. The process is mean to prevent unfairly highlighting one organization’s event over another’s or placing posters based on content.

“In this instance, the bottom slot was available. Unfortunately, the pairing of the two posters was unintentional and obviously regrettable,” Powers said. “We apologize for the accidental pairing of the two posters as we know that Yiannopoulos’ appearance is distressing to many in the LGBTQ community and beyond. The HUB staff is planning to review its protocols for advertising in these spaces.”

Yiannopoulos was permanently banned from Twitter in 2016 after calling African-American actress Leslie Jones “a black dude” and “barely literate” and encouraging abuse directed against her from other Twitter users. He was banned from Facebook in 2019.

In 2017, Yiannopoulos was forced out as editor of the right-wing media organization Breitbart News and uninvited from speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference after being accused of advocating for pedophilia. He said his remarks that sexual relationships between 13-year-olds and adults can “happen perfectly consensually” and “can be hugely positive experiences” were attempts to cope with his own experience as a victim of child abuse.

Yiannopoulos also has been accused of advocating for violence against journalists. In 2018, he reportedly told a New York Observer reporter that he “can’t wait for vigilante squads to start gunning down journalists on sight” and doubled down on it, saying that’s a “standard response.” Yiannopoulos later said his comments were only intended to taunt reporters.

He told told LifeSiteNews in March that he is “an ex-gay man” and that he now advocates for conversion therapy, practices that attempt to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity. The American Medical Association, American Psychological Association and Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, among others have called for a ban on conversion therapy and the practice is barred in 12 states. Though not banned statewide in Pennsylvania, it is prohibited in 12 municipalities, including State College and Bellefonte.

Yiannopoulos, who married his husband in 2017 and now describes him as his “housemate,” plans to open a conversion therapy clinic in Florida, where he lives, according to the event website

He also has been accused of associating with and promoting the views of neo-Nazis and white nationalists.

Leadership from Penn State’s University Park Undergraduate Association, Lion PRIDE and Queer and Trans People of Color, issued a statement on Tuesday to “strongly condemn the message and intent” of Yiannopoulos’s appearance at the university, writing that it “promotes homophobia on campus.”

The leadership of @qtpoc_psu, @psu_lionpride and @upua_psu condemn the message and intent of the recently announced Milo at Penn State event, and stand in support of the LGBTQIA+ community. Please refer to the resources for anyone affected by this instance pic.twitter.com/RZGhpGQ1V6

— University Park Undergraduate Association (@UPUA) October 26, 2021

“Bigotry and discrimination have no place at Penn State…” they wrote. “The advertisements displayed across campus stating ‘Pray the gay away’ have been reported as trauma-inducing for victims of conversion therapy, and have severely impacted the mental health and the personal and educational daily routines of affected communities as a result.”

They called for the event to be canceled, writing that other public universities have done so because of “violence and threats of violence in past university tours.”

“Yiannopoulos’s rhetoric directly contradicts the values that Penn State aims to uphold and egregiously targets members of our community, and therefore the event must be canceled immediately,” they wrote.

A Change.org petition urging that Yiannopoulos be uninvited had nearly 5,000 signatures as of Tuesday afternoon.

“Implying that one needs to ‘pray the gay away’ means that homosexuality is a choice and implies it is the wrong choice. This is not the message that we should be sending students or prospective students touring the campus for the first time,” student Jacob Ehrbaker, who created the petition, wrote in the description. “It implies that there is something wrong that needs to be changed to ‘fix’ being gay.”

Yiannopoulos was scheduled to speak at Penn State in 2016, but his appearance was canceled due to contractual disagreements related to ticketing with the College Republicans.

At a conference in 2017, Penn State President Eric Barron said his university “dodged a bullet” when Yiannopoulos pulled out.

“He’s creating his own anti-free speech movement wherever he goes because his message really is, ‘Tear down the university. They’re just a bunch of liberals that don’t want to listen to anybody,’” Barron said at that year’s Quality Advocates Session.

In their statement on Monday night, the university administrators said student groups “select the speakers they invite to campus without the university’s endorsement, or even with the University’s displeasure, as is the case here.”

“As a public university, we are fundamentally and unalterably obligated under the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment to protect various expressive rights, even for those whose viewpoints offend our basic institutional values,” they wrote. “To do otherwise not only violates the Constitution, but would undermine the basic freedom each of us shares to generally think and express ourselves as we wish. A public university cannot impose the risks of censorship on those whose viewpoints it does not like without equally risking censorship for all, including those viewpoints it strongly endorses.

They added that they hope students and community members “will avoid being baited into reacting” and instead “oppose bigotry, misogyny, transphobia, and anyone who is determined to make their living by dividing us.. by ignoring him.”

“At his core, Yiannopoulos is a social provocateur — a personality whose central public purpose is to deliberately create controversy, hurt and disruption,” the administrators wrote. “That is something we all should recognize. The posters promoting his presentation are largely designed to provoke response. The message is odious and divisive, and we wish we could simply erase it, but we cannot, just as we cannot prevent Yiannopoulos’s appearance next week.

Onward State’s Matt DiSanto contributed to this report.