In campus
clashes from California to Vermont, many defenders of the First Amendment say
they see signs that free speech, once a bedrock value in academia, is losing
ground as a priority at U.S. colleges. As protests have derailed speeches by
controversial figures, including an event with Ann Coulter last month at the
University of California, Berkeley, some fear students have come to see the
right to free expression less as an enshrined measure of protection for all
voices and more as a political weapon used against them by provocateurs.
What
I can bring to this discussion is the experience of a law-abiding and moderate graduate
student activist in "the long 1960s" followed by service as a faculty
member in the 1970's onward, specifically service on the Miami University
Student Affairs Council as we recommended to The President and Trustees of the
Miami University — the University as "a body corporate and politic" in
Ohio — rules regarding free speech and disruption.
Student
Affairs Council (SAC) did not deal directly with student attitudes, and if
someone had brought up attitudes I might've quoted, "Laws are the great
schoolmaster of the commonwealth" — from Francis Bacon or someone like
that — and noted that in this instance SAC was supposed to recommend rules
governing, first, on-campus behavior
and second, behavior by people on campus:
students, faculty, staff, and/or visitors.
Miami
University is a public institution and respect for First Amendment free-speech
rights were — in theory — part of relevant Ohio law and implicit in our mandate
for rules, so we tried to respect the free speech of teachers, speakers,
protesters, and what some of us (well, I, anyway) somewhat flippantly thought
of as "civilians." And we came up with a fairly simple rule asking
that SAC work on the principle of a
right to interrupt but prohibition of
disruption.
Teachers
were not paid enough and were on
campus enough that they shouldn't have to take much shit from their students
and none from visitors to their classrooms. But we weren't back in the days of
young Hitlerites intimidating professors, and the practical issue was with
big-name guest speakers. And big-name guest speakers, especially when well
compensated, were professionals, and professional speakers should be competent
to deal with hecklers. Indeed, it's part of the gig, and for a long time part
of the entertainment value of public speeches, at least of the political
variety. And a quick debate could be more educational than the one-way
communication of a speech.
So,
no, a guest speaker could not call in the cops to haul out someone who
interrupted. And we wrote the rule generally enough that neither could anyone
else, even if this meant — and I raised such examples explicitly — that a
traditional Christian wedding ceremony in the campus chapel could be
interrupted by a radical feminist objecting to "obey" in a woman's
vows, and an Orthodox or Conservative service in the campus chapel the
afternoon of Yom Kippur could be interrupted by gay students objecting to reading
the prohibition of male homosexuality in the Book of Leviticus.
Interrupted,
not disrupted.
A
"group heckle" is not heckling but disrupting, and failing to sit
down and shut up after objecting to wifely obedience or prohibitions of
homosexual behavior is also disrupting. And disruption was and usually should
be illegal.
We
retained the old formulation that the teachers or the sponsors of events should
retain their cool and warn people when interrupting was moving into disruption.
But if the interruption became disruption, or disruption was the point all
along, then we recommended authorizing calling in the cops and the armed power
of the State.
And
this was in Ohio, down the road a piece (252 miles) from Kent State University
and not long after the 4 May 1970 shootings at KSU. And if anyone had ever
asked me — and they didn't — I could tell anti-War stories of Michigan and
Balbo in Chicago in the summer of 1968, and the University of Illinois campus
and how the two times I was most seriously threatened with serious injury it
was by police with clubs.
(Of
course, a big part of the reason I was only seriously threatened twice in my
life is because of the strong State with a lot of cops [a
"Leviathan"], but that's another essay.)
So
we knew that every law and rule is, ultimately, backed up by force — including
our rules on the size of pet fish in dorms — and some of us knew very well that
even legal force can get nasty.
Protesters
had the right to interrupt; speakers and their audiences had the right to speak
and hear … after a bit.
I'm
sure by now the Miami U Office of Legal Counsel has grown to significant size
and rules are written by small teams of lawyers — especially sensitive rules
such as those regarding guest speakers. But I like the rule we wrote and
recommend our principle: Interruption, sure,
especially of over-paid, over-pampered political trolls; disruption, hell no.
Student
attitudes can be worked on later, starting with teaching the simple fact that
when speech is restricted, minorities with unpopular views are the first groups
to get shut up — and Leftist, radical, unorthodox views are usually unpopular. Then
"da older guys," and gals, can tell the young hotheads about the word
"provocateur" and the tactic by Establishments through history of
provocation to get reaction — and the use of reaction to get activists in jails
or hospitals or morgues and the Establishment more firmly in power.
