The recent visit by Kyle Rittenhouse to Western Kentucky University was a triumph for free speech. But the event also demonstrated why lawmakers need to go further to ensure that college campuses remain places where a diversity of viewpoints are free to be expressed.

In 2020, Rittenhouse, age 17, took a rifle into the middle of a riot in Kenosha, Wisconsin. He was, perhaps unsurprisingly, attacked and later acquitted for shooting and killing two of his three assailants in self-defense. He now advocates for the right to bear arms on campus and was invited by a student group to speak at WKU.

Two weeks prior to Rittenhouse’s visit, WKU officials took the unusual step of sending a campus-wide message clarifying that the speaker was not invited by the university itself.

Controversial speakers often come to campus, many officially sponsored by some unit within the university, and almost all espousing far-left views that conservative students and faculty find disagreeable or upsetting.

In none of these cases does WKU issue such a disclaimer. But also in none of those cases do conservative students and faculty try to silence free speech. Sadly, that was exactly what was happening.

In days leading up to the event, both WKU’s president and provost issued additional statements affirming that the university was committed to being a place where a diversity of intellectual and political ideas is welcome and that the institution was, in fact, compelled by a 2019 state law not to bar invited guests or interfere with their right to speak.

It was evident that university leaders were under enormous pressure to either condemn the speaker or cancel the event or both. WKU leaders stood strong. As WKU’s president wrote to the community: “The cure for speech with which we disagree is not less speech but rather more speech. The capacity to disagree is a cornerstone of democracy, more important now than ever in our deeply polarized world.”

Rittenhouse gave his speech. Counter demonstrators marched outside and waved signs. The evening was loud but peaceful. The whole thing was a victory for the right to express disagreeable viewpoints. WKU’s administration should be commended for its courage and careful handling of the event.

But the effort of so many in the community to silence their perceived enemies is part of a nationwide problem in which universities have become ideological monocultures. Political perspectives even slightly right of center are unwelcome and sometimes outrightly persecuted on college campuses.

SB 6, recently sponsored by Sen. Mike Wilson, R-Bowling Green, was a reasonable measure that would ensure students, faculty, and staff could not be compelled to affirm ideological concepts with which they disagree. That bill was derailed by members of the Kentucky House who wanted the bill to go even further, and no legislative action was taken this session.

All of this should be a wake-up call to universities that they must vigilantly defend the free exchange of ideas or lawmakers will, quite rightly, force them to do so.

— Gary Houchens is professor and director of the educational leadership doctoral program at Western Kentucky University.