Jessica Oyler is vice president of the office of Student Access & Success at Weber State University in Ogden, Utah.
Richard Price is a political science professor at Weber State University in Ogden, Utah
A protest for free speech at Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana, on Sept. 24, 2025.

Here in the year 2025, under a cloud of Trumpian threats to free speech on university campuses, we have this: Organizers of a Weber State University censorship conference canceled their event because a Utah anti-diversity law led university officials to put restrictions on what they could say.

So a censorship conference was axed due to censorship. After years of hearing conservatives cry wolf about cancel culture and claiming campuses were “silencing conservative voices,” and on the heels of educators across the country getting fired for anodyne comments that followed the killing of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk, this is the cherry on the hypocrisy sundae.

The primary culprit in the Weber State case is an anti-DEI bill – HB 261 – signed into law by Utah’s Republican governor. That law prompted the university’s vice president for student access and success, Jessica Oyler, to send an email Sept. 30 to the censorship conference organizers saying, in part: “Presentations should not describe legislation or policies in ways that take a side, such as labeling them ‘harmful’ or attributing them to a partisan ‘strategy.’ Even if the intent is to provide context, that language is difficult to reconcile with HB 261 when used in non-academic programming.”

Republican laws and Trump's threats mean you can't call censorship harmful?

It’s a bit tricky to not label censorship “harmful,” and it’s even trickier to not attribute censorship to a partisan strategy. For ages, conservatives have loudly and incessantly claimed the left is trying to silence them. (If that was the case, it sure didn’t work worth a hoot.) But now, thanks to GOP legislation, students and professors can’t talk openly about censorship during Weber State’s 27th Annual Unity Conference, a name that seems hilarious in the wake of these developments.

Richard Price, a Weber State political science professor and expert on censorship who was slated to speak on a panel at the event, responded to the cancellation on their blog, writing: “You see, administrators decided that no one could present information at this conference that suggested that censorship was the result of one side or the other or that partisan strategy is important to censorship. I, a political scientist, was told not to talk about politics. Or, I guess, I could talk about politics so long as I pretended that both sides were equally involved in censorship (or censorship just emerged from the ether). In other words, I was ordered to lie to my colleagues, students, and the general public.”

Oyler explained to me that Weber State faculty are covered by academic protections outlined in the state law, but because this event was organized through her office of Student Access & Success, it involved university staff who don't have the same protection.

Though the conference was canceled because too many speakers backed out after learning about the restrictions, she said an ad-hoc event discussing academic freedom was held outdoors on campus on Oct. 3.

"What I tried to do is say that we can still have space on campus, same time, same place, just not under the conference itself," Oyler told me.

'One small piece of the broader war on higher education'

Personally, I understand the bind the university was in, and I get – particularly in this political climate – the desire to protect staff members. What I don't like is the simple fact that there was a bind in the first place, and responsibility for that falls in the laps of Republicans pushing fear-inducing legislation in service of culture-war gripes.

I spoke with Price about this bizarre turn of events and they said: “This is just one small piece of the broader war on higher education driven by Republicans and conservative elite groups. For the last at least five years, we have seen the development of this very aggressive system of explicit censorship that is now coming to fruition.”

He noted recent developments in Texas, where a Texas A&M professor was fired for mentioning “gender and sexuality” in a class, and Angelo State University officials told professors not to discuss transgender identities.

“Within the national politics around education in particular, the fear is dramatic,” Price said. “Right now, I'm told repeatedly by the administration that my academic freedom is protected, I'm allowed to teach my courses, I'm allowed to talk about trans people. But what we are seeing in other states is the quick erosion of that line. And that erosion is leading to a point at which university education, at a minimum, is being driven towards conservative indoctrination.”

Republicans' weird issues with DEI and gender are stifling free speech

A Texas professor recently told The Chronicle of Higher Education: “Everyone’s so scared right now. Everyone’s just trying to not get fired. People don’t go to campus as much, because why would you? They shut their doors. They don’t want to meet.”

This is, to use an academic term, bonkers. It’s also bad. And sad.

The idea that you can’t assign political responsibility to censorship when one political party is clearly and vividly dictating what can and can’t be said in a college classroom or on a campus is as cowardly as it is preposterous.

And it’s a frightening sign of what might come for those of us outside college campuses.

When censorship conferences are being censored, we should all worry

I asked Price how concerned Americans should be about their free speech rights. They answered: “I would say extremely. It's a deeply concerning development when the government defines holders of certain political views as the equivalent of domestic terrorists. And, you know, we've had that history before, right? The 20th century is full of stories of especially left-wing actors, supporters of civil rights, workers' rights, being surveilled, harassed, arrested, deported for their political views.”

The answer, I’d posit, is to push back relentlessly. President Donald Trump’s recent attempt to do away with late-night comedian’s Jimmy Kimmel’s show prompted massive cancellations of Disney+ and widespread public outcry. Kimmel’s show is back.

Clearly, it’s different when you’re talking about a major celebrity vs. a canceled student event at a university. But it’s incumbent on those who believe in free speech – including conservatives whose beliefs aren’t anchored to partisanship – to stiffen their spines and resist these pathetically transparent attempts to stifle campus and classroom discussions.

We shouldn’t live in a country where we see headlines like this: “Weber State censorship event canceled, after organizers said school wanted to censor speakers.”

That sounds like satire. But here in the year 2025, it’s very much real life.

Follow USA TODAY columnist Rex Huppke on Bluesky at @rexhuppke.bsky.social and on Facebook at facebook.com/RexIsAJerk

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: A university censorship conference gets censored? This is Trump's America. | Opinion

Reporting by Rex Huppke, USA TODAY / USA TODAY

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