Colleges have struggled to uphold the free speech rights of their students, and some of them expect student groups to pay for extra security when hosting controversial events.
Two recent incidents at DePaul University and the University of California at Irvine have prompted Inside Higher Ed to ask what responsibility colleges have to prevent protests from obstructing a student event.
At DePaul, student protesters shut down a College Republicans event where they hosted Breitbart writer Milo Yiannopoulos for his trollish lecture, “feminism is cancer.” At UC-Irvine, Students for Justice in Palestine interrupted a film screening hosted by a Jewish student group. The College Republicans lost control of the event in DePaul and had to cancel it after 15 minutes, and the film screening at UC-Irvine wasn’t resumed until police restored order.
“Shutting down a protest is tricky. When college authorities act too quickly, they infringe on the rights of peaceful demonstrators who are doing exactly what they’re taught to do,” Ellen Wexler wrote.
Though difficult, public colleges are constitutionally obligated to uphold the First Amendment for its students. Though students have the right to protest and express disagreement, they don’t have the right to silence. When a college fails to uphold an academic atmosphere that prioritizes freedom of speech, they capitulate to brutish forces of intolerance. Conservative student groups have the right to host an event as much as LGBT student groups, but only one of those would spark national outrage, were they to get shut down and silenced.
“Those who interrupted the speech were wrong to do so,” DePaul President Rev. Dennis Holtschneider said in a statement. “Universities welcome speakers, give their ideas a respectful hearing and then respond with additional speech countering the ideas.”
It’s a strong statement in support of free speech, but it’s also hollow. The university didn’t do enough to protect speech when it mattered. Furthermore, administrators charged the College Republicans and Breitbart for the extra security during the event.
A general rule that colleges could adopt to address such threats to free speech is to delineate between protest that is disruptive and protest that is discursive. Protesting outside an event doesn’t require the police to usher students away. Students who invade an event and shout down speakers to prevent speech they oppose are beyond the pale of discourse.
