Northwest Corner Building, where the talk took place.

Staff Writer Ezra Lerner stopped by the Columbia University College Republicans’ latest speaker event on October 24. Although Mark Krikorian is less high-profile than other speakers the group has brought to campus, he used similar far-right rhetoric. 

In recent semesters, CUCR has been heavily criticized for inviting prominent far-right speakers, including Tommy Robinson, Ann Coulter, and Mike Cernovich. Mark Krikorian, the latest in this line, is the Executive Director of the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), a group which has been designated a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Although on the surface Krikorian seems more affable than the previous speakers, his talk was no less radical.

Krikorian presents himself as a reasonable person with reasonable methods for solving immigration problems, but he also seems to relish being cast as a villain by the left for his far-right ideas. One of those ideas, he explained, is drastically shrinking the number of immigrants, both legal and illegal, who enter the United States. He chastised the United States for being too lenient towards immigrants who come with children, even after the family separation crisis over the summer. Krikorian also called for “detention centers,” if necessary, as a form of “hardball” designed to limit the influx of immigrants into the United States.

Krikorian did not limit himself to immigration. He criticized an undefined group of “elites” for being at times “post-American” and at times “anti-American.” He specifically mentioned the late historian Howard Zinn’s book, A People’s History of the United States, which focuses on U.S. history from the perspective of the nation’s oppressed peoples. Krikorian described it as “subversive” and “anti-American.”

Krikorian seemed crestfallen at the lack of outrage at his event. He frequently mentioned, unprompted, that he must be offending people and seemed disappointed that there were not more confrontational questions during the Q&A. At the end of the program, he agreed to stick around to give people plenty of time to debate him.

Photo via Bwog Archives