At Citizen Kentucky’s Constitution Day event at the University of Kentucky last Wednesday, write-in US Senate candidate Robert Ransdell managed to get mike time to spew his anti-Semitic views.
Ransdell, a “self-described pro-white candidate,” calls his 2014 platform “With Jews We Lose.” He says current American policies “favor Israel” over its own interests, and claims there’s a bias against whites in media crime coverage.
He was invited to speak by a student who helped organize the event, but that student has not been identified.
As of Wednesday night, it was unclear if organizers of the event had known Ransdell’s platform.
First Amendment Center director Mike Farrell said that he needed to speak to professor Buck Ryan, the Citizen Kentucky project director, before commenting.
Ryan was not available to the Kernel for comment.
“Constitution Day is not about politics, it is a celebration of the principles of the Constitution,” wrote UK spokeswoman Kathy Johnson in a statement released by the university Wednesday evening. “All speakers are asked to focus on those principles. Unfortunately, Mr. Ransdell included his political beliefs and platform in his comments. Many of those in attendance felt his comments were inappropriate, especially for an audience that included high school students. The University of Kentucky was not aware of the content of his remarks prior to him speaking and does not condone or endorse any political platform or agenda.”
Students from a local high school were in attendance during Ransdell’s talk, much to the dismay of one of its teachers, James Miller.
Miller finds it hard to believe the university didn’t know in advance about Ransdell’s politics. At the very least, he says, there should have been notice about who was going to speak:
“It has been my experience that people like Robert Ransdell take every opportunity to talk about their poisonous, hateful ideas,” Miller said. “So for the university to pretend that … no one could have predicted he’d say this stuff is naïve at best.”
“I guess a better question is, ‘Why didn’t UK give us the names (of the speakers)?” Miller said. “Unless the point was to catch students off-guard.”
Ransdell ended up having his microphone cut during his speech.
Read more here.
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