Posted on 04/15/2005 7:07:23 AM PDT by Flightdeck
A speech about academic freedom turned into a "violation of First Amendment rights," according to Dana Cloud, a member of the International Socialist Organization.
Six people, including one juvenile, were arrested Wednesday night after protesting David Horowitz's speech at Townes Hall at the UT School of Law. The Texas Federalist Society hosted the meeting and invited Horowitz, a right-wing advocate and author of the Academic Bill of Rights, to speak.
Opposition groups were holding signs and speaking out during Horowitz's speech on Wednesday, but when they were told to stop speaking, some took out noisemakers to mark their disapproval of the speaker. Three females and three males were arrested and then jailed under charges of disrupting a meeting or procession - a Class B misdemeanor. The subjects were not UT students.
Cloud, an associate professor in communication studies, attended the speech and witnessed the arrests. She said the situation was ironic.
"Horowitz claims to be for free speech, but he is actually on a campaign to discredit and ruin progressive intellectuals," Cloud said. "In the name of free speech, they are basically calling the police on protesters."
Victoria Corinne Cloud, no relation to Dana Cloud, and Dylan Wayne Vicknair were both arrested for physical action - the use of an air horn. Michael Stephen Hardin, Catharina Elizabeth Perry and Scott Crow were arrested for verbal utterances - yelling and arguing with a speaker. All six activists were released late Thursday afternoon.
Anastasia Breloff, the president of the Texas Federalist Society, and other officers from the society said they warned activists at least three times, each time reiterating the possibility of arrest.
"Protesters chose to disrupt Mr. Horowitz's lecture by moving threateningly toward the stage, shouting at the speaker and blowing foghorns and other noise-making devices," Breloff said in a statement.
Melissa Hotze, assistant vice president of events, was sitting in the last row of the auditorium and said she was frustrated that the protesters would not sit down until the question and answer period to voice their opinions.
"When he was at other campuses, people were throwing pies at his face. We just alerted the UTPD that he was coming, and there might be potential of things happening," Hotze said.
According to Hotze, Horowitz's point was that "universities have a very liberal faculty, and if you are a conservative, you are going to be penalized from your academic freedom."
Horowitz encourages students to report their professors who openly silence the opinion of conservatives in universities.
"The irony of squelching such a protest with police on a meeting on free speech is the fact that Horowitz is part of a growing trend, the new McCarthyisms - disciplining progressive faculty," Cloud said.
LETTER FROM QUOTED PROFESSOR:
Fight Horowitz
I was one of two dozen people who protested the appearance of right-wing ideologue David Horowitz at the Law School Wednesday night. (University of Texas at Austin)
Although the subject of the meeting was freedom of expression, and Horowitz routinely accuses campus progressives of silencing different points of view, he set police on protesters who expressed their disagreement in the style and tradition of unruly civil disobedience. The ironic message: Shut up so I can talk about free speech. Indignant, Horowitz refused to begin speaking about the importance of free expression so long as protesters held signs criticizing him. Six young protesters were arrested and jailed.
Horowitz and his ilk pursue the agenda of silencing the left, all in the name of free speech. He attempts to whip up fear of tyrannical radical professors who, he says, indoctrinate what he sees as hapless, immature undergraduates. (Apparently, he hasn't met my students, whom I respect as adults capable of speaking for themselves and making their own judgments.)
In fact, his crusade for free expression is a cynical sham: Horowitz maintains a blacklist of left intellectuals and activists, arguing that critics of war and oppression should not have the right to teach or protest. His is a freedom of expression reserved for conservatives who - in spite of their side's holding inordinate economic, political, and coercive power - feel marginalized in the face of critical pedagogy.
However absurd and hypocritical, his efforts should be taken seriously as aligned with a series of assaults recently on academic freedom at Columbia University, University of Colorado, and City College of New York. Unfortunately, the threats to our jobs and civil rights are all too real.
As someone (among hundreds of others) whose name appears on Horowitz's Internet hit list, I wonder who the real censors are: critics of the war and feminist professors, or those who have and will use the real might of the police and the state to silence criticism and dissent? Defenders of real freedom of speech and learning must stand together against the new McCarthyism.
Dana Cloud Associate professor, Communication studies Member, International Socialist Organization
PROFESSOR'S RESEARCH INTERESTS:
Dana L. Cloud (PhD, University of Iowa, 1992) specializes in the analysis of contemporary and popular and political culture from feminist, Marxist, and critical anti-racist perspectives. She teaches undergraduate classes in persuasion, social movements, speechwriting, and rhetorical criticism, as well as graduate courses in rhetoric and the public sphere, rhetoric and ideology, rhetoric and feminist theory, and rhetoric and popular culture. Dr. Cloud's areas of current research include the critique of therapeutic discourse, feminist and Marxist theories and politics, rhetoric of "family values," and the rhetoric of the U.S. labor movement.
Hey me too! Can't wait for it to happen.
Seems to me that the persons violating the idea of free speech were those who were using airhorns, etc., to drown out a speaker who had gone to the trouble of engaging a hall and attracting an audience. They have a right to disrupt a speaker, but no one has a right to disrupt them?
...and I would buy everybody in the world a puppy, so they could feel the love I feel....
Well, I have engaged Ms. Cloud through email, and so far it has been respectful.
I did point out to her that she and her peers ought to spend more time outside the towers. She would understand that to the general public her views on this issue and the behavior of the protestors are seen as childish, crud and uncivil and nothing close to the exercise of free speech. I told her that she would also understand why Mr. Horowitz's concerns resonate 'out here.'
Sounds like the protestors were the ones who were blocking speech.
Rose Bowl victory and a pro-Homosexual, socialist student body versus being a Big XII also-ran with a pro-military, conservative student body - I think I'll stick with my Ags.
I hope there are enough Horns like you that can root out the socialist scum prevalent on your campus. Texas is certainly big enough to have two conservative public universities.
Underlying motive alert.
How does a person get to be this nutty?
This idot professor doesn't even understand English or History. By definition Civil disobedience is CIVIL, therefor can not be unruly. If they were being unruly as she describes, then they should be rounded up and forced to leave. These idiots are actually proving Horowitz point that, the campus attempts to stiffle the conservative view point.
I have written to Ms. Cloud:
It is reported that people dissatisfied with Dr. Horowitz's ideas approached the platform he was speaking from (a move that someone who had recently been assaulted onstage might well view as threatening) and used noisemakers and an air horn to disrupt his speech. If that is true, isn't that a violation of Dr. Horowitz's rights to free speech? It seems to me that while these people had every right to air their views about Dr. Horowitz, it is not acceptable for them to do so by interfering with Dr. Horowitz efforts to present his own views. Considering that Dr. Horowitz had been invited by an interested audience for that express purpose, they were also interfering with that audience's right to listen to Dr. Horowitz. What would your viewpoint be if you were giving a speech to a group that had invited you do to so (and perhaps had paid to engage the hall you were using), and Dr. Horowitz's supporters decided to act in the same fashion, disrupting your presentation? Would they be justified in doing so?
And she replied (and granted me permission to post it):
Thank you for writing. I have begun to get a lot of mail and have developed a standard answer to queries like yours. I think it is completely appropriate for people to talk back to me; it is part of the rough and tumble of democratic contestation.
You are welcome to visit my classes. Unlike a public forum or other space where social movements break out, the classroom is a more sacred civil space where I would not heckle anyone; nor would I think it fair to students for someone to disrupt their learning. I have read Mr. Horowitz's statement on academic freedom, and find I meet all of his criteria for an ethical educator, by the way.
I had nothing to do with the various noisemakers of other activists. No one approached the podium to threaten Mr. Horowitz. It is my recollection and understanding that noisemakers were employed only after the hosts of the meeting threated to arrest those who spoke. Also, many of Horowitz's supporters made noises--clapping and cheering, for example--interrupting the flow of his oration. I do understand and sympathize with verbal and other outburts (although again, I didn't make any of those myself) when a speaker says absurd things like "the proof that racism doesn't exist is that Oprah Winfrey, a black woman with a weight problem, makes a lot of money." Or "I can argue circles around any leftist in the room."
He had the right to speak; we had the right to talk back. Democracy has always involved protest in the U.S. from the Boston Tea Party, through the ending of slavery, through civil rights and other progressive change. Being unruly is part of the tumble of democratic life, when it occurs in the open, in public. The classroom is not an ethical space for that kind of struggle. I would hope you would respect my students (you don't have to respect me) and save the heckling for a public lecture or rally. I am speaking at a rally on April 21 on the West Mall. That would be an appropriate place to heckle me.
I've been heckled many times. I've had death threats and other kinds of threats. I've had people asking for my job on a platter (oh, wait, that was Horowitz). I have NEVER called the police on anyone and would never have a heckler arrested in a public setting.
Horowitz has been confronted everywhere he goes because many faculty, students, and activists know what he's about, and it's not freedom of expression. He's on a tear to get rid of people like me. It's how McCarthyism started: the keeping of blacklists of suspicious persons in the name of freedom. When McCarthyists come for me, I'll be out there with signs and I'll use my voice.
You are certainly free to do the same. Again, for me the classroom is different. Perhaps I have convinced you. If not, please write again. Depending on the volume of mail, I may or may not be able to respond.
Sincerely,
Dana Cloud
LOL, who's doing the silencing, brainiac? HOROWITZ's free speech is being impuned when he can't continue with a lecture for which he was solicited to give by an interested party because of juvenile antics by those such as yourself.
Jim Quinn, TS host out of Pittsburgh, is fond of saying that one of his main "quinnisms" is - to understand what the left is doing or planning to do, look at what they're accusing the opposition of." And he's absolutely right.
What a freak.
Make no mistake: To the Left, "free speech" means the unhindered dissemination of the Left's viewpoint, and nothing else.
Lemme see, protesters were going to conduct 'unruly' civil disobedience in order to prevent Mr. Horowitz from speaking, therefor exercising his 1st Amendment right that he was invited there to do. However, because the protesters were breaking the law (civil disobedience involves breaking the law), this somehow is an infringement upon their first amendment right through an action that is equivalent to shouting 'fire' in a crowded auditorium. Makes sense to me /sarcasm
Just sent this email out:
"So, Dana, if I and some other persons barged into your class, lecture, or speech and made loud noises and disrupted your "free speech" message and/or lesson, that would be OK? Looking forward to meeting you someday soon."
I'll post if I get a response from the hypocritical fool.
Bravo to Mr. Horowitz and the brave right-minded students who brought him to Austin! I was testifying at the capital - or waiting my turn, which came at 3 AM - and regretted not being able to hear Mr. Horowitz. (Although, I mistakenly thought it would be similar to when Professor George spoke. I should have known better.)
Why do they push and push, until we have no option other than to react?
How heartwarming to know that my tax dollars go to this enemy of the USA, employed to brainwash students at UT! I guess we have a bunch of old, ignorant regents, friends of the governor, to thank for this nest of vipers in Austin.
True, true.
She specializes in "rhetoric " - Not truth.
Rhetoric of the labor movement? "Join the union. Pay me your dues. Or I'll beat you up and take your money."
Give her a taste of her own medicine, and see how she likes it.
Hogwash , honey....It is the lefty loonies that want (no demand) that all critical commentary cease!
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