First Amendment hypocrisy

This article by Josh Keller caught my attention as most headlines referring to First Amendment issues do. After a particularly dynamic discussion class in college, any writing on the First Amendment captures my interest.

In an initial reading of this article I see both sides of the argument. I believe strongly in the First Amendment and believe that everyone has the right to speak an opinion despite its offensiveness or unpopularity.

The First Amendment is at the core of our freedom as U.S. citizens. It safeguards the diversity of opinion in our culture, it protects that lone voice of dissent, that passionate advocacy that is outside the mainstream. I believe strongly that these 10 Muslim students have every right to share their opinion in protest. But I agree with Erwin Chemerinsky that those 10 students did not have a First Amendment right to shut down the speech that they were interrupting. I also agree that these 10 students do not deserve criminal prosecution for it.

Recently, on the Auraria Campus, we had an appearance by Alberto Gonzales who was White House Counsel and later Attorney General under George W. Bush. His appearance created controversy mainly because he is widely known as having affirmed that waterboarding is not torture while acting as a sort of legal advocate for the War on Terror.

Many people on campus were angry and several protested outside the venue in which he spoke. There were people who yelled from the back door of the auditorium and some who wore black hoods and stood up silently in the middle of his speech until they were asked to leave.

I spoke to a faculty member at this event who was distributing a letter to everyone who came in that talked about waterboarding as torture, but was essentially an overall critique of the War on Terror. Before the event had started, this professor made it known that he completely disagreed with everything Alberto Gonzales had to say. So, I asked, “do you know what he is going to say?” Then the professor answered, “It doesn’t matter what he says, he and Bush got us into this war and I am ashamed that this campus is spending money to bring him here.”

Conversations like that always bother me. This professor was standing for what he feels is a noble cause, a righteous indignation against George W. Bush. He has every right to his opinion and can say all he wants against the administration. However, generally people who are protesting from one side of the political landscape, have championed the first amendment rights of those they agree with and have tried to shut down those they disagree with, but no one acknowledges the hypocrisy. This open-minded, liberal faculty member was not willing to listen to someone he disagreed with.

Do we need to be protected from bad ideas? Is it anyone’s job to disrupt a speech on a college campus, despite its controversial slant?

I read a book in one of my undergraduate courses entitled Free Speech For Me But Not For Thee by Nat Hentoff (1992). The book focuses on how both sides of the political spectrum continue to try to censor each other. This book changed the way that I consider first amendment issues as I see evidence everyday of the blindness people have in listening to opposing viewpoints. Hentoff says that colleges need to be places where all ideas can be examined and yet he points out systematic censorship from both the right and the left in the setting of higher education.

But this case is more about disruption than free speech. In the California case, the students were adjudicated because what they did was a disruption, which is against the institution’s Code of Conduct as well as law. In the situation at the Auraria Campus, the only protest I had a problem with was the yeller in the back of the room. The silent protestors left when asked. The professor wrote his opinion and distributed it peacefully. I just don’t understand why people think that the best way to protect their own ideology is to keep an opposing opinion from being heard. Shouldn’t we as adults be able to listen and decide for ourselves?

Overall, I believe in the First Amendment. I believe in a person being able to share their opinion. I also believe that a person, when speaking at an established event has the right to not have their message thwarted by those who disagree. I believe people should be able to protest against someone with whom they disagree, it just needs to be within the boundaries of law and policy.