Former President Donald Trump is slated to visit Saint Anselm College in Manchester next week to participate in a town hall discussion organized by CNN.
The event is prompting the college to justify the decision to host Trump, with the school president issuing an open letter on the matter this week. Last fall, Saint Anselm College scuttled an event featuring Rudy Guiliani, Trump’s personal attorney, on the grounds that Giuliani’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election on Trump’s behalf undermined democracy.
Trump’s visit – and how the college is handling it – underscores the challenges facing New Hampshire’s political infrastructure as it prepares for Trump’s next presidential campaign to ramp up in the state. Unlike his first New Hampshire primary campaign eight years ago, Trump is now under criminal indictment, faces the possibility of other charges, is on trial in a civil case involving an alleged rape, and carries a steady record of making false statements about election security – including claims that he was the rightful winner of the 2020 presidential race. Yet, he remains the leading 2024 GOP candidate in New Hampshire.
For its part, Saint Anselm College says hosting Trump is consistent with its mission of fostering civic dialogue.
“Of course, politics, and politicians, can be divisive, so why would we offer a forum for such activity?" Saint Anselm College President Joseph Favazza asked in an open letter to students and faculty Monday. “It is simple: We believe that honest and informed interchange of ideas and perspectives is the bedrock of an informed electorate, which is why we have enthusiastically and impartially hosted political events since the 1950s.”
Favazza’s letter noted that the timing of Trump’s visit, on the eve of the start of final exams, “wasn’t ideal,” but said the college is working to minimize disruption.
But not everyone on campus is pleased.
“Ideas and words are not happening in a vacuum,” Saint Anselm physics professor Nicole Gugliucci said Wednesday.
Gugliucci said Trump’s past appearances on the campus were disruptive and said she fears hosting Trump in 2023 will put students’ safety at risk.
“There are people, there are protestors, there is harassment,” she said.
A petition, posted on Change.org by Saint Anselm student Adysyn Kilty, made a similar argument.
“ALL Anselmians should feel safe on this campus, knowing that our administration would not knowingly attract a crowd who make us feel unsafe – especially those who belong in marginalized communities,” part of her petition states.
The petition, which by Wednesday afternoon generated 500 signatures, is addressed to Favazza and Neil Levesque, director of the college’s Institute of Politics.
Levesque says the decision to host Trump was not his. The town hall will be taped at the college’s Dana Center, not the Institute of Politics. But Levesque defended the decision.
“Donald Trump is a candidate for president and CNN wants to interview him here. They have basically rented out a facility to do that, and the college is going to allow that to happen,” Levesque said.
Levesque chose to block Guiliani from appearing on stage at the Institute of Politics this summer for a scheduled event.
“I would not have Vladimir Putin do an event on human rights, and I would not have Rudy Giuliani on a panel on elections,” Levesque said Wednesday.
The Institute of Politics did host Trump for speeches in 2015. But Levesque said the idea of hosting Trump in a standalone appearance again had not been proposed.
“We haven’t been asked for that, but the point is that we try to be as open as possible to many things.”
Levesque noted that when the Institute of Politics chose to host Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an anti-vaccine activist, earlier this spring, he also got plenty of complaints. He sees dealing with those as a necessary – and growing – part of his job.
“There are a lot of college campuses where you can’t have any discussion these days about anything, because somebody finds it offensive, and I don’t think that’s good for our democracy in general,” Levesque said.
