Even before Charles Kirk, YouTube had videos of similar personalities visiting university auditoria, like Ben Shapiro, or the strange event featuring Milo Yiannopoulos, Christina Hoff Sommers, and Steven Crowder that led to the Triggly Puff meme.
I don’t remember anything like that from my experience 40+ years ago at a remote Midwestern state university. Visual artists like Roy Litchenstein or William Wiley would come and exchange pleasantries with an appreciative gathering. William Windom and John Houseman told theater stories. I think the worst thing I ever saw was when Patricia Neal came to speak and some stupid person criticized her for having an extramarital affair with Gary Cooper.
I don’t remember any time the college speaker bookers deliberately invited anyone to “provoke and incite” us, and I’m grateful that they didn’t.
In 1966, the leader of the John Birch Society in Alaska came to speak at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks. He didn’t get very far before he was challenged on his bullshit by one of the professors.
I also remember Jimmy Stewart speaking at my high school in Anchorage. I believe he was a Brigadier General at the time (1965).
I only remember really high-level academics as visiting speakers, or people with a very specific knowledge base. For example in my Spanish program, we had a guy who was responsible for declassifying the Kissinger files on Operation Condor.
I do remember during the Iraq War there was a visiting guest talking about his experience in a fascist dictatorship. He was passing a student protestor with a “BUSH IS FASCIST” sign and the guest ripped him a new asshole.
Really the idiots were limited to the student population.
It’s worth keeping in mind that there isn’t a single set of “college speaker bookers.” Any reasonably-sized university has hundreds of different departments, colleges, and organizations that can invite and host speakers. People like Kirk, Shapiro, et al. are nearly always invited by conservative student organizations, not by the university itself. They may be paid (at least in part) by university funds, but only because the university has a pool of money available for all registered student organizations that apply for it. In some cases, other conservative groups or private donors may also be bankrolling the speaker.
The speakers you remember from your undergraduate days were probably invited by an official university entity – art department, theater program, Honors College etc. That still happens all the time today, and while academic programs may sometimes host a political speaker, it’s usually part of a debate, candidate forum, or similar event with an educational purpose, not a random provocateur.
I think the controversial speakers are often booked by student groups, aren’t they? Like Young Republicans or Campus Life. Students get mad at the schools for allowing it but the schools shrug and say “free speech.”
When I was at Kent State in the late 90s we had a guy who posted up in the middle of the “quad” named Preacher Chuck. He was an ex drug addict who found Jesus and came with his microphone and speaker to let us all know how we were fornicators and sinners and going to hell. Being the liberal arts school that it was (is), people were NOT happy. Eventually someone took a swing at Chuck, but that just made him more determined to tell everyone how awful they were.
I don’t believe even the Young Republicans or Campus Life ever formally invited him to speak.
When I was at Villanova in the late 90s, and Montana State in the early 00s, there certainly were political figures invited to speak. They probably weren’t as controversial, but then, politics in general wasn’t as controversial then.
I graduated with my BA in History in 2008. I went to see Michael Eric Dyson in 2005 when he spoke on the campus of Philander Smith College. PSC, a HBCU, also had Ann Colter speak the same year. Around 2007 or 2008, my university had Richard Leakey come speak to us. I remember a few other guest speakers, one who wrote about Kissinger (not Isaacson), but I am hard pressed to remember their names.
I went to a small liberal arts school (late 70s, early 80s) where almost everyone was in the liberal to radical range. We had one really fantastic professor who would invite at least one speaker to campus every semester to give us a chance to hear different views. They were legitimate people, (not people like Kirk) and we had some interesting and mostly respectful discussions.
You know in retrospect it’s hard for me to generalize about our speakers. There was way too much going on to be aware of everything. There were 50,000 students. I was only aware of my own little corner.
There was a similar itinerant preacher who used to visit the University of Illinois when I was there in the late 1970s. I think he was Brother Jed. He’d stand in the quad and rail at passing students about their lives of sin and fornication. Occasionally he’d provoke someone into an altercation, which I’m pretty sure is what he was aiming for. That would show everyone how intolerant and violent we godless liberals were.
But I wouldn’t call him a “guest speaker”. I’m sure the University didn’t invite him to speak there.
In the late 80s at my college we had a number of provocative speakers. One (don’t remember who, exactly) was a Pro-Lifer. Didn’t go over so well.
Then we had Joe Clark, the high school principal from New Jersey, played by Morgan Freeman in Lean On Me. I found him interesting, if not terribly believable. He also brought a baseball bat with him, as I recall.
Then we had that peach of a man, Timothy Leary. He was debating another guy about drugs and came across to me as an incredibly raging asshole. The kind of person I wouldn’t want on my side in any argument. I thought he was a selfish prick who only wanted what he wanted, and never mind anybody else.
I don’t specifically remember any speakers, other than the speaker at my graduation in 1986. Long before my time, it was nicknamed “the little red schoolhouse” and I’m sure that plenty of controversial spekers were invited. Although I doubt that they were conservative.
In 1970 William Kunstler, the attorney for the Chicago 7, spoke at St. Louis University. I don’t know if the university actually sponsored him - it might have been a student organization. In any case, the school allowed him to speak on campus, and the alumni went absolutely insane over it. He came, he spoke, he left, and nothing happened.
ETA: During the same year, Civil Rights activist Julian Bond spoke at Harris-Stowe State University, just down the street from SLU, and a bunch of students walked down there to see him. Nothing untoward happened there, either.
Around 1960, someone invited Wm. Buckley to speak at Penn. His talk was rather low-key (I don’t think he mentioned his support for McCarthy, which I found out about later) and we listened with respect. One interesting point he made was that once you elected a communist government, there was no going back, since no communist government allowed a free election. Hmmm.
Henry Kissinger was a frequent speaker. The extreme hate for Kissinger developed more after he was basically off the speaker circuit, but you can go back decades to see him causing a bit of controversy.
When I was in high school George Bush Sr. came and spoke at Javelina Stadium at Texas A&M Kingsville (back when it was Texas A&I). This would have been in the fall of ‘91 or spring of ‘92. Other than that, I don’t recall any guest speakers coming to give talks either at A&I or at Baylor when I was there from the fall of ‘95 through the spring of ‘99.