8. Professor seeks to ban KKK from campus
Professor seeks to ban KKK from campus
University of Louisville Professor has a unique plan to keep the Ku Klux Klan off his campus: ban the group, then in court that it's a terrorist organization.
"Nobody that," Ede Warner said.
Klan members started posting fliers on campus early the spring to protest diversity programs sponsored by the school. That stirred debate that has taken place on campuses around the country: how far the university can go to keep some groups off campus and how to best deal with unpopular ideas in the academic setting.
What makes the Louisville situation so is the presence of the KKK, said Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Alabama, which tracks the Klan and other hate groups. "I cannot think of another situation when the Klan on campus," Potok said. "The Klan is quite small, even within the contemporary radical right." Having the Klan banned as a terrorist organization based on its past would be legally difficult, especially given the Klan's in recent years. "You would run into issues of free speech," he said.
Officials banned two members of the KKK from campus this month, saying they violated university policy about where fliers can be posted. That could give Warner his fight. Jim Kennedy, the self-described point man for the KKK in the Louisville area, said the Klan is preparing to contest the ban in court. Kennedy said: "They're trying to get around that freedom of speech any way they can."
The Klan started appearing on campus in the fall after black activist and rapper Sister Souljah gave a speech that some students said was derogatory to whites and received $11,000 for the talk. Others said the main theme was black empowerment. Afterward, Kennedy demanded that the Klan be given equal time and compensation or the school end the diversity program, which he considers racist.
the 21,400 student campus, with 77 percent white students, 12 percent black students and 11 percent other minorities, reaction to the Klan and Warner's proposal is mixed.
Some schools bar all non-campus groups from making presentations on campus unless they are invited and sponsored by a campus organization. At Louisiana State University, where former Klan grand wizard David Duke the occasional on-campus appearance, anyone may as long as they do not disrupt classes or university business.
Kennedy just wants to present an alternative to the school-sponsored diversity program. He said: "I just want time."