WATCH: Bloomberg confronts Ivy League 'liberals trying to repress conservative ideas' in 2014 Harvard speech
In his remarks, he addressed "censorship" and "repression" of conservative ideas on college campuses.
Former New York City Mayor and 2020 presidential candidate Mike Bloomberg delivered a Harvard commecement speech in 2014.
Former New York City Mayor and 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Mike Bloomberg delivered a commencement address at Harvard University in 2014, blasting Ivy League schools over their “censorship” and “repression” of conservative ideas, which he compared to “McCarthyism.”
In the speech, uncovered by Campus Reform following Bloomberg’s debut appearance in Wednesday night’s Democratic presidential debate in Las Vegas, Bloomberg blasted “intolerance” and the imbalance of conservative and liberal ideaologies on America’s college campuses.
”Intolerance of ideas, whether liberal or conservative, is antithetical to individual rights and free societies and it is no less antithetical to great universities and first-rate scholarships,” Bloomberg said in 2014. “There is an idea floating around college campuses, including here at Harvard, I think, that scholars should be funded only if they conform to a particular view of justice. There’s a word for that idea: censorship.”
[RELATED: Bloomberg blasted college campus ‘intolerance’ in blistering 2019 op-ed]
The Democratic presidential candidate went on to call this “censorship” “just a modern form of McCarthyism.”
”Think about the irony. In the 1950s, the right-wing was attempting to repress left-wing ideas. Today, on many college campuses, it is liberals trying to repress conservative ideas, even as conservative faculty members are at risk of becoming an endangered species and that is probably nowhere more true than it is here in the Ivy League.”
Bloomberg then cited data from the Federal Election Commission, which he said shows that in 2012, “96 percent of all campaign contributions from Ivy League faculty and employees went to Barack Obama.”
”That statistic should give us some pause, and I say that as someone who endorsed President Obama for re-election,” Bloomberg added.
[RELATED: STUDY: Profs donate to Dems over Republicans by 95:1 ratio]
WATCH:
Follow the author of this article on Facebook: @JonStreetDC and Twitter: @JonStreet
