Officials at taxpayer-funded Virginia Tech have disinvited Jason Riley from speaking on campus because they fear “protests from the looney left.”

Riley, a member of the Wall Street Journal editorial board and a senior fellow at the free market-oriented Manhattan Institute, got the bad news late last week, according to National Review.

He had been scheduled to give a speech at Virginia Tech’s Pamplin College of Business as part of its BB&T distinguished lecture series.

The unidentified professor who had arranged Riley’s speech explained in an email that Vijay Singal, the chairman of Virginia Tech’s finance department, had decided to disinvite Riley.