ANALYSIS: ‘I think it’s insane that that’s sent to everyone on campus’
As progressives on U.S. campuses continue to justify vandalism, harassment, and threats as “free speech,” an alleged “hateful” and “misogynistic” email sent by a conservative University of Iowa student group resulted in leftist students’ feelings being hurt.
The UI Young Americans for Freedom email, which promoted an April 7 appearance by former Sean Hannity radio show producer Elisha Krauss (and was approved by the university), asked “Are you sexist?” and said “Whether you hate women or love women, we have a speaker and a donation drive you won’t want to miss!” according to The Daily Iowan.
YAF Secretary Daelynn Wygle said Krauss will discuss how “leftist values are anti-woman.”
“We want to protect women from being injured by men competing in women’s sports,” Wygle said. “We also fight to maintain women’s locker rooms and bathrooms as places free from men. All of these positions are clearly pro-woman, yet leftist feminists insanely claim that men can become women.”
But UI “health promotion” major Ava Neppl told the student paper the YAF email “comes off [as] push[ing] the narrative that it’s okay to be sexist or hate women.”
Neppl said the email “was meant to be harmful and offensive and to get people riled up,” especially as it was sent on the Trans Day of Visibility. She added she’d have been “embarrassed” to be associated with the message.
Student Devin Buttz claimed the message was “intentionally transphobic”: “I’m really shocked. It wasn’t just the email itself. It was the day it was sent. It was Trans Visibility Day, and I think it’s insane that that’s sent to everyone on campus.”
KCRG reports some miffed students tore an event banner (pictured) and poured water over a chalk message advertising Krauss’ appearance. And speaking hate, some sent the YAF messages calling them “fascists” and their event “insane,” “ridiculous,” and “idiotic.”
The Left hates women!@ElishaKrauss @yaf @_YAFreedom pic.twitter.com/cn8DARYftO
— Iowa YAF (@Iowa_YAF) April 1, 2025
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One message referred to Krauss as a “traitor to women.”
UI Professor of Journalism and Mass Communication Brett Johnson (pictured), an attorney who teaches media law, media ethics, media sociology, and the “disruptive forces of digital technology” on those areas, noted concerns over the email’s alleged “hate speech.”
As there is “no precise legal definition of hate speech,” Johnson told the Iowan, the YAF is protected by the First Amendment. But conservative student groups doing “controversial” things is “nothing new,” he added.
“It was baiting people because it proves their point. It martyrs them in that kind of a way,” Johnson said. “It’s part of the playbook. This isn’t organic happening just here at grassroots level.”
Of note, one of Johnson’s scholarly articles defines “hate speech” as “any speech that attacks and attempts to subordinate any group or class of people, typically spoken by a group with a higher level of social power than the targets of the speech.”
The U. Iowa website states “The First Amendment protects speech that may be hateful, offensive, or inconsistent with the university’s values. The best response to speech the listener finds offensive is counter-speech.”
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IMAGE CAPTION & CREDIT: A pair of college students are upset at the news; Shutterstock.com. INTERIOR IMAGE: U. Iowa