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Students, teachers at UT spread message of love and unity

It comes a day before a white nationalist group is set to speak on campus.

Professors at the University of Tennessee held a teach-in on Friday to lecture on the history of Fascism.

It comes a day before a white nationalist group is set to speak on campus.

"In my ideal world, the campus would be a complete ghost town on Saturday," said German associate professor Daniel Magilow.

However, he knows that won't be the case on Saturday.

"I know that’s not a realistic viewpoint because again we live in a media-saturated world with print, TV, and social media in particular. So, even if there were a boycott, then that would become the news. So my idea is sort of a strategic one rather than what I’d rather be doing, which ideally would just be ignoring these fools because of the ludicrous mindset they’re advancing," Magilow said.

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Magilow was one of several professors who lectured on the history of Fascism during a teach-in on Friday. He suggested students try to change the discord around the situation.

"If we treat them as the clowns they are, then I think that creates a louder message. If you google, KKK rally Knoxville 2007, you get a lot more hits about the counter-protestors than you do about the Klan itself," Magilow said, referencing a white-supremacy rally in May 2007 in the wake of the murders of Channon Christian and her boyfriend Christopher Newsom.

"When a bunch of white nationalists were yelling 'white power', a bunch of people dressed up as clowns and threw baking powder in the air, saying 'white flour'."

This time, students at UT are organizing their own response.

Senior Faith Held with the Progressive Student Alliance is one of the organizers for counter-protests on Saturday.

"I hope that people in the future can remember that campus, and not just campus, but the Knoxville community, came together against hate speech, and we love everybody. We don’t think we’re better than anyone else, but we’re prepared to put our foot down when it comes to that kind of rhetoric," Held said.

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