New York University announced Tuesday it was postponing a Halloween lecture by far-right provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos due to security concerns.
The university said it agreed to push back Wednesday night’s talk at the request of Mayor de Blasio. The university said the request was made in light of nearby Halloween parades and risk assessment by the NYPD.
“Given the importance of close coordination between NYU's Public Safety personnel and the NYPD to ensuring safety, the University agreed to the postponement,” NYU said in a statement.
A mayoral spokesman says the New York Police Department can handle anything, but having the speech immediately adjacent to one of the biggest events all year "doesn't make a lot of sense."
Yiannopoulos was invited to speak at a professor’s regularly scheduled class on the politics of Halloween. NYU said that administrators only learned about it through press reports over the weekend and that the speech would not have been open to the public.
In an Instagram post, Yiannopoulos -- a former Breitbart News editor who fell from grace last year after suggesting that he condoned sex with boys as young as 13 -- blasted the move, calling himself the most censored man in America. He says the entire city "is terrified of one gay man stepping out of line and calling out the Left as the intolerant, censorious crybabies they are."
