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Why UW College Republicans invited Milo Yiannopoulos to speak

caption: Milo Yiannopoulos at LeWeb13 Conference in Central Hall Westminster, London.
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Milo Yiannopoulos at LeWeb13 Conference in Central Hall Westminster, London.
Flickr Photo/Kmeron (CC BY 2.0)/https://flic.kr/p/eDVAjE

Bill Radke talks to Jessie Gamble, University of Washington student and president of the College Republicans, about why she and the club decided to invite the controversial, self-declared "most fabulous super-villain on the internet" to speak at UW on Inauguration Day.

She told Radke why she wanted the school's conservatives to hear him.

Gamble: "I want them to speak up. Even if you don’t agree with everything that Milo says, even if you don’t agree with everything I say, the whole club, the college Republican club, we all have a different spectrum of conservative ideas.

"I want you to get involved. I want you to contribute to the dialogue. That was my whole point in bringing Milo here – you have someone that is really going to break the conversation about free speech wide open, and someone that is going to be very bold and very brash, so that you are inspired.

"If he can do that, maybe I can say, 'I believe this ...' in class. The bare minimum, the bare bones of what you believe. And to do so, even if it may cause scrutiny, even if it may mean you may not make a lot of friends in that class, from my experience, when I speak up, it’s usually another conservative in class that was too worried to say anything."

Editor's note 1/24/17: Half way through Yiannopoulos' speech, a man was shot just outside on UW's Red Square where protesters had gathered. The victim was taken to Harborview with a life-threatening wound to his abdomen. Gamble is defending her decision to bring Yiannopoulos to campus.

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