Table of Contents
'Daily Collegian' Columnist Denounces 'Shameful' Heckler's Veto at UMass Amherst
Last week, a club-sponsored speaking event at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst made news when a group of protesters repeatedly interrupted the speaker. According to the Daily Collegian, protesters distributed literature in advance of the talk, which they read aloud as a call-and-response that drowned out the speaker several times over the course of the 90-minute lecture. The next day, student columnist Gavin Beeker penned an excellent column highlighting the folly of the protesters' heckler's veto:
The thing I love about UMass is that one can find people from every cultural and political persuasion; this diversity of outlook keeps debate lively [...] It is for this reason that I am a bit puzzled, and frankly dismayed, upon reading a Daily Collegian article about the actions of the Occupy and labor studies activists at a lecture on the merits of free capitalism last week.
From what I could gather from the article, activists went in with a predetermined goal to present their dissatisfaction with the basic tenets of the lecture. This in itself seems fair and reasonable - to symbolically show an opposition to the ideas presented. But the activists went further, disrupting the speaker and monopolizing the question-and-answer session with, as the Daily Collegian reported, "long-winded soliloquies." What could have been an opportunity for lively debate about the relative merits of competing philosophies instead denigrated into divisiveness and bile.
The concept of a heckler's veto is often misunderstood, particularly on college campuses, but Beeker is spot-on: Students can protest a speaker that they disagree with, but the protest may not disrupt an event to the point that it obstructs the speaker from expressing his views. Some allowance for heckling in a speech is important, but as a general rule, sustained, planned, and repeated disruptions likely go too far. Beeker's headline sums up the issue nicely: "Free speech includes ideas you don't like, too." Hopefully, his fellow students at UMass Amherst will take note.
Recent Articles
FIRE’s award-winning Newsdesk covers the free speech news you need to stay informed.
Should the First Amendment protect hate speech?
In America, hate speech is generally protected by the First Amendment. But should it be?