Opinion: College campus hecklers, your disruptions don't count as free speech (via latimesopinion )
Stanford Law Dean Jenny Martinez’s classroom with fliers reading, “We have free speech rights too,” and, “‘Counter-speech’ is free speech.”
Apparently, America’s future lawyers and future judges fundamentally misunderstand free speech rights. Shouting down speakers is just like any other form of censorship: It’s the few deciding for the many what they can hear. Protesters have every right to engage in peaceful, nondisruptive protest. But they do not have the right to take over someone else’s event and make it their own.
This is a basic point, and we understand it in almost every other context. Nobody argues that you have a free speech right to stand up during a Broadway musical andJust because the public is invited to attend an event — and sometimes to speak during a Q&A period — does not make it the public’s event to disrupt or transform as it pleases. Your distaste for a speaker doesn’t grant you a right to prevent a willing audience from listening to that speaker.
There must be places in a free and pluralistic society where groups can freely associate and share ideas without first seeking approval from a crowd of hecklers. Colleges are such spaces. It’s the very reason they exist.
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