In October, Brown University protesters prevented New York City Police Chief Ray Kelly from speaking.
During Kelly’s talk, titled “Proactive Policing in America’s Biggest City,” protesters loudly chanted slogans and read prepared text, drowning out Kelly. A university administrator tried to reason with the protesters, but to no avail.
As a result, after a failed half-hour attempt at regaining control of the room, the lecture was cancelled. As covered extensively at Legal Insurrection, the protesters have received support from several professors, two of whom also are active in the anti-Israel movement. Leftist and anti-Israel shout downs are just about the only shout downs on campus these days.
But don’t think it’s just Brown. There is a long history of liberals and anti-Israeli groups shouting down speakers with whom they disagree.
Here are five examples other than Brown:
1. Congressman Tancredo at UNC
In 2009, students at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, brought Republican Congressman Tom Tancredo’s talk about illegal immigration to a halt by shouting him down. When Tancredo asked ironically, “This is the free speech crowd, right?” a student responded, “not for hate speech!” The students continued to chant, “No dialogue with hate!” as Tancredo struggled to get across a single word.
2. Concordia University Netanyahu riot
In 2002, a scheduled lecture by then Foreign Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was cancelled at Concordia University after protesters became violent.
3. Columbia students shout down the Minutemen
Violence broke out when members of the Minutemen visited Columbia to speak. Left-wing protesters shouted Minutemen co-founder Jim Gilchrist, took to the stage, and waved protest banners. The president of Columbia’s College Republicans told O’Reilly later:
“People are saying it was the speaker’s fault for antagonizing the crowd. When in reality, anyone who was there could tell you that at the beginning, they were chanting, they were cheering, they wore masks, they threw papers at the stage, and the second they came out with the banner it was a signal for the rioters in the audience.”
4. UC Irvine students shout down Israel’s Ambassador to the US
At 1:32 in the video, witness how students clap and cheer when a student interrupts Israel’s Ambassador to the US, Michael Oren, as he begins his lecture at UC Irvine. When an administrator insists that the students be, “polite and courteous to our guests,” the students boo. Oren urges the students that, “you haven’t come to this campus to hear one idea, you’ve come to this campus to hear a multiplicity of ideas,” and not to “squander the opportunity.” Students react instead by shouting him down again. This happens over and over again during his lecture.
5. Former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales heckled by students at UF
During former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales’ lecture at the University of Florida, two protesters walked to the stage and approached the podium in an intimidating way. Students started cheering, and Gonzales’ speech came to a halt. Meanwhile, students booed at him, held up signs, and turned their backs on him with the word “SHAME” on the backs of their shirts.
These are only five examples, but many more exist. They include:
– Protestors threw a pie at Ann Coulter during her speech at University of Arizona
– College students chased David Petraeus and shouted at him before CUNY lecture
– David Horowitz was booed off stage when giving a lecture at Emory University
I’m not sure how liberal students justify these actions while simultaneously talking about respecting diversity and inclusion. It appears that there is a lot of hypocrisy going on on college campus.
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As I said on another thread: get a video of a howler monkey troop in full cry and have it ready to be played at rock-concert volume right back at the shouter-downers.
It’s not really a new phenomenon.
After Jeanne Kirkpatrick left as UN Ambassador in the ’80s, she was shouted down after being invited to speak at Tulane, I think. Then in the early ’90s, a loud minority of students and professors at Brandeis protested her honorary doctorate.
The Left, which now controls every facet of the Democratic Party (witness all the “red state” Democrats who vote in lockstep with Obama, Reid, and Pelosi), cannot brook discussion or debate. In any civil exchange of views, their policies would all be exposed as proven failures, counterproductive, and based on lies with ulterior motives.
So they stop the debate before it can begin by shouting it down.
The modern “Presidential debate” format is also designed to prevent their fallacies from being exposed. Questions are asked by leftist media types who can be counted upon to protect the Democrats’ vulnerabilities and shift discussion to areas more easily sloganized.
The short answers and responses are also geared to prevent any serious discussion of issues. Notice in all his debates, Obama avoided tough questions by filibustering his responses to use up the time. And the panels never hold Democrats’ feet to the fire for evasions, either.
Honest debate and full discussion are the last things Democrats want because they are certain to lose them all.
Greg Lukianoffs’s Unlearning Liberty movie
There should a lot of passion in the market place of ideas – just not murder!
This from people who are screaming that they should be treated like adults. If you want to be treated like an adult, act like one.
Ah, yes! We are reaping the “benefits” of progressive involvement in every aspect of eduation.
If we conservatives ever made a fatal mistake, it was to let that happen.
If there wasn’t a movie called Animal House, that portrays what campus life was like in the early 1970’s, you wouldn’t know how campuses underwent change.
Heck, back then colleges were so cheap, you didn’t need rich parents to stay at a college, where your “major” was hanging out at the student union. Until you turned 32.
You still get screamers? Small group. They’re just happy campers if cameras show up.
And, they scream anti-Israel slogans. Among topics that bring a few out to scream and shout!
Did you know that today’s kids aren’t as liberal as their predecessors? The good news is that the First Amendment works.
And, these shouters aren’t among the most popular kids on campus.
If you took a survey you’d find Israel is actually liked by lots of people who aren’t Jewish.
Hitler, on the other hand, gained traction in Germany because a bunch of lunatics, there, thought they’d win any fight they started BECAUSE they weren’t going to allow Jews to participate.
Tell me, what’s lacking from the lesson that Hitler was a failure?
So millions of people scream and shout. How does this give the arabs an upper hand? With all of this screaming, where’s the advantage of being born in an arab country?
Isn’t lots of the screaming based on jealousy?
You can’t cure jealousy any better than you can cure cancer.
Meanwhile, the First Amendment is successful because it allows lots of venting. Without the “venting” you have a sewer.
Leftists are fully invested in ‘the struggle’, and have never given up the street-mob tactics which they’ve found effective against moderates. There’s nothing a leftist hates worse than a liberal, but anyone from the right is beneath contempt and will not be accorded even the status of a human with feelings – let alone with ideas.
One can see in these mobs the nucleus of Obama’s national security organization ‘to be funded at parity with the military’. Note how the MSM has wasted very little effort in reporting these classic fascist tactics, nor in criticism of college admins for tolerating them.
One might wonder, now that even the MSM has been forced to recognize the Obamamendacity of his ‘signature legislation’, if there might be a chance of an ‘awakening’ in the media, and a future shining of light on events which have been carefully blacked out since 2008.
Leftists passionately believe in free speech, for other leftists. For anybody else, not so much.