Texas A&M says it did not invite white nationalist to campus

Texas A&M officials on Wednesday denied extending an invitation to white nationalist leader Richard Spencer, who told The Washington Post he planned to speak at the campus in the coming weeks.

“To be clear, Texas A&M University — including faculty, staff, students and/or student groups — did not invite this speaker to our campus nor do we endorse his rhetoric in any way,” the university announced on its website. “In fact, our leadership finds his views as expressed to date in direct conflict with our core values.”

The Texas A&M statement said, “private citizens are permitted to reserve space available to the public as we are a public university as is the case here.”

Spencer, a Dallas native who coined the term “alt-right,” drew headlines recently after he led a “Hail Trump!” chant and spoke in German at a white nationalist conference in Washington, D.C., last weekend.

In a lengthy Washington Post story published Tuesday, Spencer said he wants to spread his message to college campuses and plans to visit Texas A&M and the University of Michigan.

“I think there’s going to be a huge crowd,” he told the newspaper. “The world is changing.”

Spencer praised President-elect Donald Trump at the Washington conference after describing Trump’s election victory as a dream come true, according to an interview with the Dallas Morning News earlier this month.

“He’s not your father’s conservative,” Spencer said of Trump. “He’s not in this to promote free markets or neoconservative foreign politics or to protect Israel, for that matter. He’s in this to protect his people. He’s in this to protect the historic American nation.”

Trump has been questioned about the rise of Spencer and other white nationalists.

New York Times editor Dean Baquet asked Trump in an interview Tuesday if he felt like he energized those groups.

“First of all, I don’t want to energize the group,” Trump said. “I’m not looking to energize them. I don’t want to energize the group, and I disavow the group.”

This story was originally published November 23, 2016 at 1:07 PM with the headline "Texas A&M says it did not invite white nationalist to campus."