Those opposed to white nationalist Richard Spencer's planned appearance at Michigan State on Monday will have numerous alternative events available to them.
There's the Spartan Day of Love and Solidarity, which includes a diversity celebration at All Saints Episcopal Church in East Lansing and a free screening of "Black Panther" at NCG Cinema.
MSU College Republicans and Democrats are planning a peaceful rally in opposition to Spencer, alongside the democratic socialist and libertarian student groups.
Closer to the action, protesters are planning to demonstrate outside the MSU Pavilion for Agriculture and Livestock Education, where Spencer is scheduled to speak beginning at 4:30 p.m. Monday.
“Talking about genocide or that some people are intrinsically more intelligent because of their race are not rational ideas to be debated,” said David Langdon, who is part of a coalition planning the protest.
Spencer’s ideology doesn't deserve the sort of public platform speaking at MSU affords, he said, and there are people intent on shutting the event down or preventing it from happening in the first place.
Langdon, who was an MSU student a decade ago, expects to see a few hundred protesters.
Shutting down the speech would be the wrong approach, said Fred Fico, a retired MSU professor and adviser to the MSU College Republicans.
"My litmus test for Nazis - left or right - is the desire to shut down speech," he said.
By allowing people like Spencer to speak on campus, MSU stands as an example of what public universities should strive to be, Fico said.
"(MSU) ought to be about freedom of expression, the advance of knowledge and transmitting knowledge and holding up values the Constitution and the Bill of Rights embodied," he said.
MSU initially denied Spencer's request to speak on campus. A lawsuit prompted the university to change course.
In May, Spencer led a torch-bearing crowd on the University of Virginia's campus is opposition to the planned removal of a Confederate statue.
“What brings us together is that we are white, we are a people, we will not be replaced," he told protesters, according to the Washington Post.
Three months later, he was billed as a featured speaker at the "Unite the Right" rally featuring white supremacists and nationalists at the University of Virginia that left a protester dead and another three-dozen people injured, though police declared the event an unlawful assembly before he could speak.
When Clara Wilson learned days afterward that Spencer wanted to come to Michigan State, she was terrified. She didn’t want to see the violence of Charlottesville in East Lansing.
And so she was elated to learn that MSU had turned Spencer down over public safety concerns.
But then the university was sued by an associate of the avowed white nationalist, and, after court-ordered mediation, MSU opted to allow Spencer to speak on the first Monday of March, when most students would be on spring break, and in a facility south of the main campus more commonly used for livestock shows.
"This agreement was based on the university’s requirement that the event occur on a date and at a venue that minimizes the risk of violence or disruption to campus," then-MSU President Lou Anna Simon said in a statement announcing the news.
"Michigan State rejects this group’s divisive and racist messages and remains committed to maintaining a diverse campus and supporting an inclusive, just and democratic society," her statement concluded.
But some believe a stronger sort of statement is needed.
Josh Lown, a master's student at MSU, argues that stopping the event is necessary to prevent Spencer's racist views from entering the mainstream.
"The idea behind holding these sorts of events is to get people into this violent and genocidal ideology," he said.
A space inside the pavilion is being rented by Spencer’s group, the National Policy Institute, which describes itself on its website as a “central and indispensable component of the international Alt-Right." Alt-right generally refers to the modern white nationalist movement, which has an explicitly racist and antisemitic ideology and argues for the creation of a white state.
The meeting is ticketed, and Spencer controls who is allowed in said MSU Police Lt. Doug Monette.
“The safety and security of our campus community remains our top priority,” Monette said.
Spencer is one of the most visible white nationalists in the United States. In 2013, he called for a "peaceful ethnic cleansing," at a conference hosted by a white nationalist publication, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.
The organization calls Spencer “a suit-and-tie version of the white supremacists of old, a kind of professional racist in khakis," and one of America’s most successful white nationalist leaders.
Kenneth Waltzer, a retired MSU professor and former director of its Jewish studies program, said disrupting the event is misguided and makes Spencer look more serious than he really is.
“It gives him what he wants, which is publicity and notoriety,” Waltzer said.
Given the position, MSU was put in and the case law on free speech rights at public university campuses, Waltzer believes the university did well by putting him in a remote place when few students will be around.
Waltzer, who spoke at a "Building Community, Resisting Hate" community forum held at the university on Tuesday, opposes Spencer’s rhetoric, which he said harkens back to the ideology of Nazi Germany. It's an ideology Americans have fought against the past, and should continue to oppose, he said.
Contact RJ Wolcott at (517) 377-1026 or rwolcott@lsj.com. Follow him on Twitter @wolcottr.