Let the youth protest — and let Amy Coney Barrett speak at the University of Minnesota

I was all fired up to write a column about the importance of free speech on university campuses — about why we need to listen to different perspectives, if only to better test and scrutinize our own.

I would not simply espouse from my keyboard. I would find real young people to bolster my argument. Let them shine in their convictions about the need to air arguments with which they disagree deeply in their bones.

But I had forgotten the most humbling part of this job, which is that real people rarely follow the script I have already plotted in my head.

Amy Coney Barrett, the conservative U.S. Supreme Court justice, is set to speak Monday at the University of Minnesota at the invitation of the law school. Her visit has infuriated many students who find her views abhorrent. Protests are planned, and the Young Democratic Socialists of America at the University of Minnesota has circulated a petition demanding the law school rescind the justice's invitation.

I don't agree much with Barrett, but I defend her right to speak, especially in an academic setting. Exposure to diverse ideas is essential to learning and the art of argument. It's too easy these days to remain smugly certain of our own perspectives when no one is there to challenge us. I thought: Who better to argue this than a high school debater?

But when I talked to Abdihafid Mohamed, a debater and senior at Edison High School in Minneapolis, he didn't say what I expected.

"If there are this many people who don't want to hear her speak, I think the people in charge should just listen to that," said Mohamed, who is also a student-athlete and a student board rep for Minneapolis Public Schools. "Youth, as a collective, we don't have much say in the world. The only power youth really have is combining our voice and joining together. If that's not heard, it hurts."

"When someone who doesn't care about you, your demographic or how you identify, it's hurtful to see them, be praised for it, and be given the space on stage," he said. "I personally wouldn't feel safe."

I had a similar conversation with a high school debate coach who is also a student at the U. Sandy Bolton-Barrientos told me that the hot-button issues Barrett has taken action on are not abstract concepts for the people who must live with her decisions.

"I'm Mexican American. My family has firsthand experiences with immigration law," and all of the hurt and harm that has come with it, Bolton-Barrientos said. "My students are deeply impacted by these decisions about LGBTQ rights, about trans issues."

Bolton-Barrientos, who coaches the South High School debate team, also doesn't buy that the university is acting as a neutral party when inviting a speaker like Barrett to campus. Organizers of the online petition say the U is departing from its own statements to uphold a safe, inclusive and diverse campus.

Students opposing Barrett's views plan to make their voices heard, as they should.

Rallying on the plaza in front of Northrop auditorium, where the justice will speak inside for 90 minutes, is fair game. More concerning is a rising number of incidents where hordes of young progressives have disrupted or even shut down conservative voices invited to speak at university campuses, including Stanford and the State University of New York at Albany.

Barrett's rise to the most powerful court in the land understandably troubles a lot of liberals. To the surprise of no one, she sided with the conservative majority that overturned Roe v. Wade, undoing 50 years of legal protection that American women fought hard to secure. She joined that same majority to dismantle affirmative action in higher education admissions. Barrett and her conservative colleagues weakened gay rights when they ruled in favor of a website designer who did not want to work with same-sex couples because of her Christian beliefs.

But Barrett also granted a major win for Native American tribes and parents when she wrote the court's opinion safeguarding their rights in the Indian Child Welfare Act. She later joined liberal justices in a surprise vote allowing the Biden administration to temporarily enforce a regulation on "ghost guns," homemade kits that criminals can use to make untraceable firearms.

Could students gain any new insights by listening to someone like Barrett? Could they challenge her during a question-and-answer session after the talk? Could they improve their own arguments by refuting hers? That only will happen if they let her speak.

I made these points to Mohamed, who countered that her speech would not be a true space of intellectual debate. But he said he understood where I was coming from. I also came to recognize his desire to protect the most marginalized. To me, our conversation validated the need for dialogue.