Claremont McKenna College was clearly trying to do a lot of things right. They invited Manhattan Institute scholar and journalist Heather Mac Donald to make a substantive case that cops are not racists and that the Black Lives Matter movement is costing black lives in crime-ridden cities.

They were worried enough to provide a police escort and even to have a backup plan in case things got out of hand –permitting Mac Donald to give her speech and take questions via livestream.

But nonetheless, a Black Lives Matter mob just threatened and shut down another conservative scholar/writer.

Here’s what just happened according to Mac Donald, via The Blaze:

“The protesters surrounded all the doors to the Atheneum where I was supposed to speak, so none of the students who had signed up to attend my lecture could get in,” Mac Donald told the outlet. “I was hustled from my guest suite by several police officers from Claremont PD into the lecture hall. It was decided that I would give the speech for live streaming to a largely empty hall. The organizers moved the podium so that it would not be visible through the windows to the students surrounding the building once night fell. We jump-started the timing of my talk as the crowd seemed to be getting more unruly.”

[…]

“During my speech, the protesters banged on the glass windows and shouted. It was extremely noisy inside the hall. I took two questions from students who were watching on livestream, but then the cops decided that things were getting too chaotic and I should stop speaking. An escape plan through the kitchen into an unmarked police van was devised; I was surrounded by about four cops. Protesters were sitting on the stoop outside the door through which I exited, but we had taken them by surprise and we got through them.”

Why did the mob do this?

The protesters organized themselves on Facebook before the speech with a “Shut Down Anti-Black Fascist Heather Mac Donald” post — complete with a photo of Mac Donald in devil’s horns — and the following text: “Together, we can hold CMC accountable and prevent Mac Donald from spewing her racist, anti-Black, capitalist, imperialist, fascist agenda. Mac Donald’s fear-mongering and manufacturing of lies will not be tolerated.”

This is how fascism actually starts: when authorities tolerate violence whose clear purpose is suppressing dissent.

These were campus police. I’m sure they did their best to protect Mac Donald. The question I do not yet have an answer to is: How many were arrested?

So far at Middlebury and at Berkeley, the answer is almost no one.

This is what complicity looks like. Unless someone gets arrested for disturbing the right to speak, colleges are granting the Left a license to attack.

Photo credit: Gage Skidmore