By M.D. Kittle,  MacIver News Service | Oct. 9, 2017

[Madison, Wis...] - José Delgado can still hear the gunshots echoing off the walls in Havana's La Cabana´, the Fortress of St. Charles.

Delgado, an adolescent at the time in his native Cuba, knew what those sounds meant. More enemies of Fidel Castro and his communist government - opponents of oppression - were dead.

"Talk about a chilling memory," Delgado told MacIver News Service in an interview this week. "I was 14, but I was fully aware of the danger my father was in. He would not go along with communism so he was a target."

"I knew a lot of people getting executed."

So it should come as no surprise that intelligent and outspoken boy of post-Revolution Cuba, the boy who boarded a plane for the United States in 1961 not knowing if he would ever see his parents again, would grow up to be a champion for free speech.

On Friday, Delgado once more stood up for the First Amendment of his adopted country. He was one of 17 members of the University of Wisconsin System Board of Regents to vote for a measure giving campuses across the state the power to expel students who repeatedly disrupt speakers or attempt to stifle speech.

The vote was near-unanimous. Only Tony Evers, superintendent of the state Department of Public Instruction voted against the rule, asserting it would chill expression.

While Delgado said he respects Evers, the chilling has come from students and faculty members who have demanded "safe spaces" from speech they find offensive. These self-appointed arbiters of what is acceptable expression and what isn't have become increasingly disorderly and violent in pushing their crusade.

The free speech policy comes nearly a year after a crowd of left-wing, "social justice" warriors attempted to shut down a speech by national conservative columnist Ben Shapiro. Student protesters, decrying Shapiro's very presence as racist, stormed the stage and began chanting, "Safety! Safety! Safety," "Shame, Shame, Shame," and other such slogans the "safe space" crowd fancies. READ the REST