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Problems with protesters
The majority of colleges and universities in this country have policies on the books forbidding students to engage in activities that interfere with or disrupt the daily business of the institution--which includes offices, classes, job fairs, interviews, and scheduled events such as panels and talks. Those policies tend to be presented as adjuncts to the schools' policies on free expression, which typically state that the campus encourages debate and dissent and free intellectual inquiry, and which often note that protesting is an accepted and respected aspect of free expression. The policies work together to outline the reasonable, content-neutral restrictions on free speech that any well-managed institution of higher learning must maintain and enforce; in particular, they make it clear that protesting must not be conducted in such a way as to silence a speaker, shut down an event, or otherwise override the rights of others to listen, to learn, and to be heard. And yet, too often, students don't seem to realize that their expressive activities have limits; too often, protesters in particular seem to proceed as if their perception of their cause's nobility exempts them from legitimate time, place, and manner restrictions.
Building on the recent outrage at Columbia, in which leftist protesters mobbed and silenced a conservative speaker, David French takes up this pattern in today's New York Daily News:
Consider this: In the spring, anti-war protesters blocked access to a job fair at the University of California-Santa Cruz and caused Army and National Guard recruiters to be escorted off campus by university police. According to one recruiter, "the situation had degraded" to such an extent that the recruiters feared for the safety of students and law enforcement officers.Prominent conservatives like David Horowitz, Ann Coulter, Bill Kristol and Pat Buchanan have been attacked with pies and salad dressing during on-campus speeches. At UC-San Francisco, a crowd of students blocked access to and scuffled with College Republicans whose crime was merely handing out flyers to students. At Washington State, protesters disrupted, shouted down and threatened actors in a satirical play.
After a period of relative calm in the 1990s, one must ask why we have seen a rise in violent acts of censorship and intimidation by the campus left.
French goes on to propose some interesting ideas about both the motivations of today's illiberal protesters and about the role technology plays in outing their methods to a public that is not at all inclined to applaud them:
The war in Iraq is to blame for some of the violence, but the violence and threats encompass broader topics and represent an expression of rage and impotence -- not the '60s expression of rage and power.The protesters hide behind tactics of the '60s to lash out helplessly at a culture that seems (to them) to be inexorably moving right. With every branch of government in conservative hands, with the rise of conservative media and with the increasing influence of religious conservatives, the radical left feels under siege. To make matters worse, the conservative movement is now taking aim at the left's last cultural bastion -- the nation's colleges and universities -- in an effort to reopen the marketplace of ideas on campus.
In the '60s, the excesses of campus radicals eventually led to a cultural backlash that ushered in the Reagan era. These same excesses committed in an era of blogs, YouTube downloads and talk radio lead to a much more immediate response. So, rather than reveling in last week's momentary triumph, Columbia's leftist radicals find themselves on the defensive, blaming others for the violence and begging the administration not to search the Internet for clues about the protesters' identities.
In the battle for the hearts and minds of the public, they have already lost.
Readers are invited to reflect on the reasons behind this rash of excessive and censorious protesting. Is it really sour grapes and tantrums, as French suggests, or are there other explanations worth considering? Is the left/right distinction that underlies French's argument accurate, or are there cases of conservative protesters being equally censorious and disruptive? How much of what we are seeing on campuses these days is owing to the lamentable lack of understanding most students--left and right--have of basic civics? After all, those who attend public universities don't reliably grasp where free speech ends and where such things as hecklers' vetoes begin; those attending private universities often don't realize that these schools do not have to extend them free speech rights and frequently don't; neither group has a strong grasp of what the First Amendment is all about, and polls have shown that many believe, for example, that offensive speech should be regulated and punishable, and that protected expressions such as flag burning are illegal.
Comments are open; reflections are welcome.
Posted by acta online at October 16, 2006 09:26 PM
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Comments
"Is the left/right distinction that underlies French's argument accurate, or are there cases of conservative protesters being equally censorious and disruptive?"
I have never heard of anything even remotely like such conduct on the part of conservatives.
"How much of what we are seeing on campuses these days is owing to the lamentable lack of understanding most students--left and right--have of basic civics?"
100%. The only objection I have to your framing of the question is the way you limit it to students. Faculty too are completely clueless about basic civics and pass that civic illiteracy on to their students unadulterated. Given the lack of education and thinking skills on the part of faculty, I see no way around the increasing ignorance and public hysteria that they and their students manifest with shocking abandon and frequency. It's the unavoidable result of replacing education with two-bit political indoctrination.
Posted by: Federal Dog at October 17, 2006 08:06 AM
"I have never heard of anything even remotely like such conduct on the part of conservatives."
Ever been outside an abortion clinic during a protest?
Posted by: Fred at October 17, 2006 01:38 PM
"Ever been outside an abortion clinic during a protest?" says Fred.
This IS a site related to education is it not?
I was unaware that there were on-campus abortion clinics. But it wouldn't surprise me.
Possibly there are also protests in Libya that are every bit as germane.
Posted by: Jefe at October 17, 2006 04:02 PM
"This IS a site related to education is it not?
I was unaware that there were on-campus abortion clinics. But it wouldn't surprise me.
Possibly there are also protests in Libya that are every bit as germane."
Are you suggesting that what happens off-campus doesn't influence what happens on-campus? If so, I beg to differ. Violent anti-abortion protests, off-campus, are often organized and led by young, conservative activists who are college students. If you think left-wing activists don't use that as justification for their own violent protests, off-campus and on, I again beg to differ with you. Some may see the campus as an ivory tower that neither influences the outside world or is influenced by it; others see the world as a whole with the campus as a part of it, both influencing it and being influenced by it. Certainly that would seem to be true as it relates to violent political protests. And what of Libya? Are you suggesting that it's a third-world, jerk-water country that has no relevance because it's not located on a college campus?
Posted by: fred at October 18, 2006 03:36 PM
Answer to the first question put by "fred": "Yes!" (in Oregon), and I was not a participant, but an out-patient at the hospital. There were no police in sight, but the protest was orderly. Just one testimonial answering your huffy rhetorical question.
Though a minority, leftist "activists" (i.e., sub-civilised racaille) wield much more influence on campuses than they deserve--that is due primarily to the craven and cowardly nervous nods they receive from pusillanimous admin-drones and the approval they get from rebarbative elements among faculties.
Dr JA
Posted by: Jacques Albert at October 19, 2006 07:59 AM
"Violent anti-abortion protests, off-campus, are often organized and led by young, conservative activists who are college students."
Do you have a verifiable reference/link to evidence that abortion protests are organized by young, conservative activists in statistically significant numbers. I doubt it.
"Are you suggesting that what happens off-campus doesn't influence what happens on-campus?" Nope, just that your original comment has no relevance to the original post.
Posted by: Jefe at October 19, 2006 11:05 AM
Perhaps we could back up a bit for the sake of clarity. Concerning excessive and censorious protesting, Erin O'Connor asked, "Is it really sour grapes and tantrums, as French suggests, or are there other explanations worth considering? Is the left/right distinction that underlies French's argument accurate, or are there cases of conservative protesters being equally censorious and disruptive?"
Concerning the possibility of conservative protesters being equally censorious and disruptive, Federal Dog wrote, "I have never heard of anything even remotely like such conduct on the part of conservatives."
I found that statement to be categorical and unsupportable and pointed out an example of conservative conduct that is very much censorious and disruptive: conservative opposition to abortion that runs the gamut from noisy protesting to murdering abortion providers. Conservative activists on several college campuses have sponsored something called the Genocide Awareness Project which displays several 13x8 foot color photographs of aborted fetuses and states in plain language that abortion providers are murderers; are the same as those who lynched African-Americans and participated in the Holocaust against Jews. (www.prolife.com, scroll down about half way.) These same activists claim they have no moral responsibility for the murder of abortion providers; but publicly branding someone a murderer, who is subsequently murdered, makes that claim very questionable in my opinion. At any rate, you cannot call your opponents murderers and then claim that you are not being censorious; nor can you do so without causing those who support abortion to seek some form of retaliation.
To go back to Erin O'Connor's original question, my answer is, yes, there are cases where conservatives are equally censorious and disruptive and their response to abortion is one example of that; further that left-wing activists use that response to justify their own censorious and disruptive behavior.
My question to Jacques Albert and Jefe is a specific one: Do you believe that the conservative response to abortion is used as a justification by left-wing activists for their own censorious and disruptive behavior? Yes or no. I believe the answer to that is, yes. It was the only point I was trying to make.
Posted by: fred at October 21, 2006 12:34 PM
To "fred": I think your question a fair one; however, those who feel compelled to resort to intimidation and violence on the left since the Vietnam "protest-era" of the 60s have often done so in groups--or better,--mobs, while the few right-wing zealots who've committed such acts seem to have acted as deranged lone wolves. But there are so many issues about which the left strays upon intimidation or worse: violent WTO protests, PETA outrages, the recent Columbia University outrages (multiply these by the many campus "incidents" where conservatives have been harrassed and attacked), BAMN (the acronym is revealing: By Any Means Necessary, mind) actions in Michigan, the periodic mob violence and looting carnivals after, e.g., the Rodney King incident that extended beyond southern California, etc. These and other leftist protests don't seem linked to the abortion issue directly. Long answer, but I think, no.
Dr JA
Posted by: Jacques Albert at October 23, 2006 02:02 AM