Freedom of Speech (Just Watch What You Say)
Ms. Malkin highlights yesterday's mob disruption of a conservative campus speaker at Columbia University. She adds a link to the attempted disruption of her talk a couple of years ago on the UC Berkeley campus. I wasn't at her 2004 talk but in a sense, ah yes, I remember it well. Such fervent antics are par for the course in any year at my old campus. Besides, she spoke in one of the main humanities buildings where at least half my courses were taught.
These desperate, repressive, intellectually violent Ivy and "public Ivy" League stunts remind me of a vicious jingle from an Ice-T rap song that was popular during those student days. (I'm not sure how popular it was, but in any case I bought the album as a way of tuning in to the prevailing countercultural currents....) Its inspiration was Tipper Gore's campaign to require warning labels for minors on musical recordings. The rap went "Freedom of speech ... (just watch what you say ...)" -- which is exactly the threat, implied and then carried out, at Columbia and Berkeley.
Update (10/6): Captain Ed speaks: "It takes very little courage to form a mob, and even less brains...."
Update (10/8): The outraged concern mounts -- see Phil Orenstein's letter to Columbia's President Lee Bollinger:
This disgraceful episode is apparently becoming the hallmark of Columbia, evoking a déjà vu of an event I attended a few years ago in the Columbia Law School auditorium where an audience of students and professors rudely shouted me down, as I tried to express a pro-Israel point of view....
Why would this surprise you (or anyone else, for that matter)? The left has always believed in free speech........so long as you agree completely with it. If you don't, why they'll just exercise their right to shout you down. That's how they define it.
Posted by: isirota1965 | October 05, 2006 at 08:21 AM
I don't equate it with "brownshirts" or fascism as some do (though this kind of sentiment could easily be manipulated by such a force). But it is beyond fear, beyond disrespect, and beyond ignorance: it's an entire breakdown of decorum and procedure, dating back it seems to the 60s.
Posted by: JMK | October 05, 2006 at 08:46 AM
From a liveblog of the event:
A Minuteman speaker said: "I love the First Amendment. As soon as you graduate, you'll all be investment bankers. I've been where you at. I know you hate yourselves."
http://www.bwog.net/index.php?page=post&article_id=2265&lionshare=cc8ae8c5c2fc3764cc08ec0a260f6837
Posted by: JMK | October 05, 2006 at 09:15 AM