"No platforming" is a real thing. Talk to some British college students. It's an actual formal policy held by several UK schools.
As far as speakers libeling students, well, how about harassment instead of libel? When Milo Yiannopoulos spoke at the University of Wisoncin-Milwaukee last year, he outed a trans student, projected a photo of her onto the wall, and mocked her appearance. Fortunately for her, the photo had been taken early in her transition, and her current appearance is different enough that the people around her -- she was in the audience -- didn't recognize her. She immediately regretted having come in. "I didn't know if I was going to get attacked or not. I was just like, 'Dear god, I hope nobody recognizes me.'"
Not long after the Milo event, the student group that had invited Yiannopoulos to UW-Milwaukee received a threatening message ("Do not walk alone at night. Do not think you are safe in your dorm/home. We are coming for you! We are going to beat the shit out of yo.") via Facebook that might have made some of them feel that same fear that the trans student felt that night. Or maybe not. The trans student wound up leaving the school; the head of the right-wing student organization, on the other hand, says she's "over the drama of it all."
So, consider the contrast between those two messages. On the one hand, there's the "beat the shit out of yo" Facebook message, which would almost certainly be considered a legal threat that could land the sender in legal trouble if they were identified. (It was sent under a pseudonym, and the account was then deleted.) The recipient doesn't seem to have been affected by it. On the other, there's the threat inherent in Yiannopoulos's speech, which was protected by the law; the target of that message wound up leaving her school. Do you see what I was getting at, earlier, about how different communities have different levels of trust in the law?
Re: On the no-platforming of Nazis
As far as speakers libeling students, well, how about harassment instead of libel? When Milo Yiannopoulos spoke at the University of Wisoncin-Milwaukee last year, he outed a trans student, projected a photo of her onto the wall, and mocked her appearance. Fortunately for her, the photo had been taken early in her transition, and her current appearance is different enough that the people around her -- she was in the audience -- didn't recognize her. She immediately regretted having come in. "I didn't know if I was going to get attacked or not. I was just like, 'Dear god, I hope nobody recognizes me.'"
Not long after the Milo event, the student group that had invited Yiannopoulos to UW-Milwaukee received a threatening message ("Do not walk alone at night. Do not think you are safe in your dorm/home. We are coming for you! We are going to beat the shit out of yo.") via Facebook that might have made some of them feel that same fear that the trans student felt that night. Or maybe not. The trans student wound up leaving the school; the head of the right-wing student organization, on the other hand, says she's "over the drama of it all."
So, consider the contrast between those two messages. On the one hand, there's the "beat the shit out of yo" Facebook message, which would almost certainly be considered a legal threat that could land the sender in legal trouble if they were identified. (It was sent under a pseudonym, and the account was then deleted.) The recipient doesn't seem to have been affected by it. On the other, there's the threat inherent in Yiannopoulos's speech, which was protected by the law; the target of that message wound up leaving her school. Do you see what I was getting at, earlier, about how different communities have different levels of trust in the law?