In a video released Sunday, white supremacist Richard Spencer announced a halt to his national college tour amid clashes between protesters and police at his scheduled speech at Michigan State University last Monday.
“At least for the foreseeable future, I don’t think it’s a good idea for me to host an event that’s wide open to the public, in which we name the date and the time,” Spencer said in his video. “Because if we do that in advance, Antifa are going to do their thing.”
Last month Spencer’s legal team announced a delay in Spencer’s potential visit to the University until a future semester, stating they would prefer to hold an event in the summer to draw larger crowds.
University spokesman Rick Fitzgerald said in an email interview the University does not currently have an update as to whether Spencer’s announcement will impact negotiations with the University for a potential speaking engagement.
“I just watched the video myself, which is sufficiently vague regarding the next steps,” Fitzgerald wrote. “We have no additional information.”
MSU allowed Spencer to speak at the school following a lawsuit filed by Attorney Kyle Bristow. Bristow has since announced he will no longer aid Spencer’s team.
Stop Spencer at Michigan State University celebrated the decision to halt the college tour, attributing the news to the joint effort of those in the community and the Stop Spencer movement.
Despite this news, Spencer claimed his experience at MSU was positive. He addressed a need for change in the structure of future events to avoid clashes between protesters, event attendees and police.
“I was able to have a great conversation with a lot of people there, and that’s the kind of thing I want to do in the future. But again, it’s just going to be very hard to accomplish this when we are facing this kind of push back from universities, this kind of heinous, violent behavior by Antifa,” he said.