When the list started it was fairly evenly distributed between right and left leaning speakers being disinvited. Now it's much more commonly right leaning speakers.
That's about speakers being disinvited from campus, not views not being represented. There are a number of problems with that analysis:
1. Several speakers are overrepresented (I see a bunch of Milo invitations), which could well just reflect their aggressiveness at getting themselves invited / the strength of their own PR team. If one political side wants to make persecution their thing, they'll show up more commonly in that database.
2. In recent years, we've had a bunch of new forums for dissemination of ideas, which is a good thing. Twitter didn't exist in 2002. YouTube didn't exist in 2002. Podcasts didn't exist in 2002. Smartphones in people's pockets didn't exist in 2002. Today, anyone who wants to know what any of these speakers' opinions are can find out, easily, what they are, without needing them invited to campus. (And anyone who doesn't will just skip the talk anyway.)
3. In Milo's case specifically, he wanted to out a bunch of undocumented students on-stage. That I think doesn't fit the profile of political views being censored. (I agree that preventing him from speaking technically counts as censorship, but it's a very different discussion.)
4. Fundamentally, this list and the original article here both suffer from a blind belief in the "Great Man" theory. If person X doesn't express an opinion, or publicize their idea, or something, chances are absurdly high that someone else will have the same opinion or idea, too. If Newton were imprisoned for his alchemy, however unjust that might have been for Newton as a person, Leibniz would still have invented calculus. What I'd like to see is if certain types of ideas are being censored, not whether certain individuals who happen to hold those ideas are being censored.
It's true that some speakers are over-represented, but I don't think that changes the trend substantially. I also don't see how you can draw a distinction between disinviting speakers and censoring the ideas they came to talk about.
And yes, there are new forums for dissemination of ideas, but that doesn't mean they are equally open to all ideas. Some things you can't write without being shouted down. This is distinct from criticism of the idea. These are personal attacks on the person who voiced the idea in the first place.
I don't understand your last point. There are absolutely things you can't talk about freely at universities, for example: immigration, gender differences in personality, variations in IQ across races, etc. I don't see how you can take an objective look at university culture and say anything otherwise.
> I also don't see how you can draw a distinction between disinviting speakers and censoring the ideas they came to talk about.
Milo is perhaps the best example here: Milo comes to campuses to cause a spectacle, not to spread new ideas. Sure, he's talking about some ideas. But that's not his primary motivation.
Milo is not an academic. Would he be happy with letting some academic go in his stead and present his same ideas in the form of an academic lecture?
> There are absolutely things you can't talk about freely at universities, for example: immigration, gender differences in personality, variations in IQ across races, etc.
Do you have any evidence for this?
(Note that you can't talk about things like variations in IQ across races as if they existed more strongly than they actually do or mean something they don't, and expect to be taken seriously. But that's not universities censoring dissident politics, that's universities expecting basic scientific literacy instead of people pushing a political agenda in the guise of science. The concept of IQ is an idea that came from the academy and has been refined by the academy; using an old understanding of IQ and what it means is essentially an abandonment of science.)
Interesting, attempts to disinvite more left leaning speakers in 2017: 4
Attempts to disinvite more right leaning speakers in 2017: 24
At least on YouTube it does seems like there are more attempts to prevent conservative ideas from being voiced on campuses by rowdy demonstrations that interrupt speakers.
I believe this evidence is consistent with my point that a robust (and perhaps growing!) network of campus conservatism exists.
Specifically, this evidence could be explained by an increasing rate of conservatism on campuses. The rate of disinvitation could be the same, it's just that there's a greater number of conservative speaker invitations going out from a greater number of conservative students. And right leaning speakers are disproportionately invited by right-leaning student organizations.
1. Several speakers are overrepresented (I see a bunch of Milo invitations), which could well just reflect their aggressiveness at getting themselves invited / the strength of their own PR team. If one political side wants to make persecution their thing, they'll show up more commonly in that database.
2. In recent years, we've had a bunch of new forums for dissemination of ideas, which is a good thing. Twitter didn't exist in 2002. YouTube didn't exist in 2002. Podcasts didn't exist in 2002. Smartphones in people's pockets didn't exist in 2002. Today, anyone who wants to know what any of these speakers' opinions are can find out, easily, what they are, without needing them invited to campus. (And anyone who doesn't will just skip the talk anyway.)
3. In Milo's case specifically, he wanted to out a bunch of undocumented students on-stage. That I think doesn't fit the profile of political views being censored. (I agree that preventing him from speaking technically counts as censorship, but it's a very different discussion.)
4. Fundamentally, this list and the original article here both suffer from a blind belief in the "Great Man" theory. If person X doesn't express an opinion, or publicize their idea, or something, chances are absurdly high that someone else will have the same opinion or idea, too. If Newton were imprisoned for his alchemy, however unjust that might have been for Newton as a person, Leibniz would still have invented calculus. What I'd like to see is if certain types of ideas are being censored, not whether certain individuals who happen to hold those ideas are being censored.