The College Fix

The Milo Yiannopoulos train shows no signs of slowing down. The latest? A campus free speech bill named in his honor.

Republican Tennessee lawmakers Rep. Martin Daniel and Sen. Joey Hensley have filed the “Tennessee Freedom of Speech on College Campus Bill,” also affectionately being called the “Milo bill.”

“We just want to ensure that our public universities give all students the right to free expression,” Hensley said at a press conference Thursday announcing the bill. “Too many times we’ve seen classrooms where the professor doesn’t want to hear both sides of an issue, we’ve heard stories from many students that, honestly, are on the conservative side that have those issues stifled in the classroom. We just want to ensure our public universities allow all types of speech.”

Citing the recent unrest at UC Berkeley, “the lawmakers indicated that the violence had hampered the expression of conservative ideas at Berkeley” and that “similar issues have cropped up in Tennessee,” the Tennessean reports, adding that Hensley “said the bill was specifically tailored to defend students with conservative views that he said had been silenced in the past.”

In a prepared statement, Yiannopoulos’ praised the bill, saying in part: “Vanishingly few schools have embraced the free speech principles outlined by the University of Chicago, and until they all do, the culture war that has erupted on campuses will not be over.”

“We are winning the war. And we will continue to win as long as students, and now defenders of free speech within the government, stand up to ivory tower intellectuals and left-wing administrators intent on shutting up any speech they don’t find convenient.”

MORE: Tufts U. student leaders reject free speech measure, call it ‘unsafe’

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MORE: Student government VP ‘tired of hearing’ about First Amendment protections

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