Known white supremacist Jared Taylor brought his toxic, vile, and fearful beliefs to Colorado Mesa University on March 27, 2025.
Simultaneously, the first CMU Unity Fest, organized by students, was held to combat the hateful rhetoric. Needless to say, the energy at the event was weird. I saw dozens of police officers scattered across the campus, some even along the rooftops of buildings.
Despite the tension, students and visitors enjoyed a wide variety of field games and activities. There were live music performances as well, all themed in protest of the ongoing event. Food trucks provided free-of-charge meals to attendees, provided that they held a Mavcard.
That isn’t to say that there was not more pushback coming from students, though. On the corner of 12th Street and North Avenue, a massive crowd protested fascist beliefs like Taylor’s, which are becoming increasingly prevalent in the current political climate.
Of course, none of this would have happened if the university had just said no to the Western Culture Club, which was the newly-formed group of five privileged “contrarian” students who invited Taylor in the first place.
He isn’t just a conservative author who I happen to dislike. He has been known for spreading outrageous ideas about people who don’t look like him — people he is afraid of — since he gained attention for founding the New Century Foundation in 1994.
He can tell you himself. In a 2005 edition of his magazine American Renaissance, among other false ideals, he claimed that “Blacks and whites are different. When blacks are left entirely to their own devices, Western civilization — any kind of civilization — disappears.”
The university’s handling of the situation was abysmal. As someone who writes opinion articles, I am obviously a strong advocate for freedom of speech. I understand that if the school told the Western Culture Club they were not permitted to host Taylor, it may have been an issue. However, there is a vast difference between one expressing their own opinion and using their words to hurt or spread false information about others.
The speaker’s crowd was limited to 80 seats, which the school claimed had all been reserved, but only about half of them were filled during the speech. Members of the media were not given access to enter, unless they personally reserved a ticket to the event.
This especially did not have to happen on school grounds. Taylor got special treatment from CMU and the GJPD to secure the event, which likely cost thousands of dollars. Despite this, CMU president John Marshall, although making his opposition to the speaker’s views clear, continued to insist that Taylor deserved to visit the university. This gave the Western Culture Club and Jared Taylor undeserved publicity for their racist views.
While the Unity Fest did a decent job overshadowing Taylor’s speech, it was only held because the university screwed up. While Taylor was certainly not given a warm welcome from the students, it is clear that leadership at the school made a terrible mistake by hosting him.
