Conservative College Speaker Says More Leftists Are Coming to Her Speeches—To Listen

A conservative college speaker says more and more left-leaning students are coming to her speeches — and not to protest, but to listen.

For the past year, Washington Examiner editor Lauren Cooley has been on a college speaking tour titled “Make Campus Great Again!” Cooley wrote in the Examiner on Friday that her crowds are changing:

[S]elf-avowed Marxists and DACA-supporting students have been showing up to hear what I have to say. These students are starving for diverse ideas.

…

Timidly, they’ll admit to me after my speech that they can’t get along with their leftist peers. They’re too emotional in their arguments and aren’t interested in deep, challenging discussion, they tell me. Their professors aren’t much better, so they say. Frustrated, they find themselves in a classroom, listening to a 25-year-old Trump supporter talking about how to make campus great again.

Cooley joined Bill Hemmer on Fox News’ America’s Newsroom Friday morning to talk about the growing phenomenon. She said left-wing students tell her “they don’t hear any viewpoints other than the leftist marching beat in their classroom, and so they’re seeking out other ideological viewpoints.” Cooley added: “They’re having to come to me — a 25-year-old with a ‘Make Campus Great Again’ speaking tour — in order to hear conservative thoughts on campus!”

Cooley attributed the change to the “political awakening” that came with the election of President Donald Trump, and “the whole Kanye West thing … where people are realizing that it’s okay to be free thinkers.”

She noted that “safe space”-loving campus snowflakes still wield an incredible amount of power on college campuses, but a growing number of left-leaning students are offended by that, and are coming out in support of free speech. These students, Cooley explained, “are becoming allies of conservative students just because they are okay with plural opinions and ideas and exploring new things — which is really the entire point of higher education to begin with.”

.@laurenacooley: "Students are telling me they don't hear any viewpoints other than the leftist marching beat in their classroom." pic.twitter.com/cDQ8bVHf12

— Fox News (@FoxNews) May 11, 2018