After a Charlottesville protest against neo-Nazi groups escalated to violence last weekend, UW-Madison leadership issued a joint statement Wednesday evening denouncing white supremacist ideology.
Chancellor Rebecca Blank said the university was planning to welcome students back closer to the start of the fall term, but she said she needed to address the national event which resulted in a fatality and President Donald Trump blaming “both sides” of the protest.
“The use of violence in the service of racist and anti-Semitic ideology is cowardly and against the ideals this country has fought to preserve for generations,” Blank said in the statement, which UW-Madison students received in their campus email inbox. “We unambiguously reject violence and the ideologies of white supremacist groups like the KKK and neo-Nazis that express hatred of people because of their identities.”
Blank also reassured students that campus safety is the university’s top priority. She said commitment to free speech requires discussion and that students should talk about the issues surrounding the Charlottesville protest in a respectful way.
“Our commitment to free expression compels us to allow the exchange of viewpoints, even those that violate the values for which this campus stands,” Blank said in the statement. “However, our goal is always to ensure that such speech remains an exchange of ideas, not an exchange of threats or violence which could endanger our community.”
