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.”

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........

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