The Chronicle of Higher Education
October 16th, 2014
When a feminist critic of video-gaming culture canceled a speaking engagement at Utah State University this week, many observers were quick to condemn the misogyny of the death threats that had led her to pull out.
But the speaker, Anita Sarkeesian, was just as quick to reframe the issue: It wasn’t the threats themselves had that forced her to cancel, she said. It was the university’s response—a response she considered inadequate.
And so Utah State became the latest poster child for a continuing problem—the challenge facing public universities in states that permit people to carry concealed firearms on college campuses. Such institutions can find themselves balanced on a knife’s edge between safeguarding their campuses and complying with state gun laws.