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This is such a silly contortion. "He shouldn't have been invited, and I'm condemning his work, but I don't want his invitation to be withdrawn." Why the hell not?
It's (usually) inherently bad for a college to overturn a group's decision to invite a speaker. It's not inherently bad for a group to rescind its own invitation. That's called changing your mind, and changing your mind isn't a violation of anyone's free speech rights.
If you think someone shouldn't have been invited to speak, and you tell the person who invited them, THEY MAY AGREE WITH YOU. That's the risk you take when you conduct an argument in a public space—that you may change someone's mind.
In order to be an effective advocate for free speech within an institution, you have to have a coherent understanding of how free speech operates within an institutional context. Way too many people with huge soapboxes do not.
Hoffman understood that his essay might lead to the cancellation of the speech, and despite his protests now, he wasn't averse to such an outcome when he wrote it.
But that's okay! It wasn't an act of hostility to free speech, or a flaw in the essay, or an illiberal wish. It wasn't something he should try to hide or walk away from.
For folks like @bariweiss and @jonathanchait to cosign the idea that he wasn't trying to get the invitation withdrawn is doubly wrong—wrong because it misrepresents his writing, and wrong because it disavows a stance there's no need to disavow.
