WBEZ reports:
Northeastern Illinois University has agreed to pay $50,000 in speaking fees to former White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer and Fox News contributor Donna Brazile, according to documents obtained by WBEZ.
A wealthy alumnus of NEIU donated money to pay for “well-respected individuals” to speak at the Far North Side campus, and that fund will be tapped to cover the cost of Spicer and Brazile’s “discussion” there next week on “politics, the press and the presidential election.” No taxpayer money will be used, university officials said.
But some faculty and staff at the public university have voiced opposition to the appearance by Spicer, who was President Donald Trump’s first spokesman after he took office. He resigned from the White House job a few months later, in July 2017.
Internal NEIU emails obtained by WBEZ show the school’s administrators have been conferring privately to figure out how to spin the story and rebut the criticism that surfaced almost immediately.
There's more:
Last week, more than 350 students, faculty, staff, and alumni sent a letter to the university’s president, Gloria Gibson, asking her to withdraw Spicer’s invitation to the public school with a highly diverse student body.
“Our students … bear the brunt of the Trump regime’s fascist practices and policies,” the letter stated. “It would be an affront to humanity to host Spicer at NEIU.”
The NEIU Student Government Association also held a town hall last week to discuss the matter. Faculty members and students said they are still weighing how to protest the event and considering holding a teach-in about free speech and Trump’s policies the day before.
An actual Trump supporter might be lurking soon on campus ! The snowflakes are triggered.
