Some Grand Junction community members, including Colorado Mesa University students and alumni, are angry about a white supremacist speaker scheduled to talk at the University Center on Thursday.

The Southern Poverty Law Center describes the speaker, Jared Taylor, as the 1990 founder of the New Century Foundation, “a self-styled think tank that promotes pseudo-scientific studies and research” that purports to show the superiority of white people.

The Foundation is known for its American Renaissance magazine and website, which often features proponents of eugenics, as well as anti-Black racists. The New Century Foundation also sponsors conferences attended by Klansmen, neo-Nazis and other white supremacists, according to the SPLC.

Image

Students and community members have planned a protest prior to the event, at 4 p.m. on the corner of 12th Street and North Avenue in Grand Junction. The group will gather there before marching through CMU campus to the University Center.

Max Applebaugh, a 21-year-old CMU junior majoring in business, founded the Western Culture Club with five members about a month ago, after another club had cut ties with him over personal disagreements, he said. One of the Western Culture Club’s first actions was to invite Taylor to campus to speak. Applebaugh is president of the club. He is also secretary of the conservative CMU-Turning Point USA club.

“I’ve been wanting to bring Jared Taylor for a few months now,” Applebaugh said. “I had a personal connection — a lawyer friend named Jason Lee Van Dyke, based in Texas, who made it possible. He paid for Taylor’s flight, accommodations and stay.”

Van Dyke is a former member of the Proud Boys extremist group and is known for representing far-right defendants in court, according to Cleveland.com.

Fifteen CMU students who are opposed to Taylor coming to their campus attempted to quash the invitation by joining the Western Culture Club and electing new members. They had hoped to rescind the invitation but the college administration refused to recognize the election, several members said.

One of the students, senior Tahirah Pedro Bochmann, said they asked the club’s faculty advisor — business instructor Georgann Jouflas — to recognize the election, which Bochmann said Jouflas declined to do.

“She said we should ‘just let it go,'” Bochmann said.

Freedom of speech is easy to support when you agree with what is being said. It becomes much more difficult when you do not.

Jouflas said she had become acquainted with Applebaugh when he was her student the prior semester. She said she was impressed that he was always reading before class, typically a history book, as opposed to being on his phone or computer. She said she enjoyed their conversations and his intellectual curiosity, so when he asked if she’d sponsor his club, she agreed.

She said her role was not to approve or disapprove of the club’s speakers but to guide it through the process of securing approval from CMU’s Student Life, which she said she did. Jouflas said she wished the club had chosen a different speaker.

“I do not support white supremacy in any form,” she said. “Freedom of speech is easy to support when you agree with what is being said. It becomes much more difficult when you do not.”

University President John Marshall did not respond to phone or email requests for comment by the time of publication. Director of Student Life Trey Downey also did not respond to a request for an interview.

Applebaugh, who said he grew up in Frisco, acknowledges that Taylor’s ideas about race make some people feel uncomfortable.

“(Taylor) describes himself as a white advocate,” Applebaugh said. “And that people should have the option to their own spaces.”

Applebaugh said he considers himself a white nationalist and libertarian.

“I do believe strongly in advocating for the interests of white people, because there are forces in America that are anti-white,” he said.