I'm not a violent person but the fact of life is that sometimes, some people simply beg to be slapped hard across the face.
Seriously.
When I was the chairman of the University of Delaware Young Americans for Freedom, I brought David Horowitz to my campus shortly after 9/11. He got protested then too, and there were protesters there who got disruptive too, but not to the point of airhorns. He did a good job of handling them.
It's disrespectful and uncivil, certainly, but not a violation of First Amendment rights. The government was not involved in the attempt to stifle Horowitz' speech.
So they infringe on his right to free speech, and then say their right to free speech was infringed upon? Do I have that right?
I swear one day I won't be able to wipe this confounded look of disbelief off my face at all. It just happens too much now.
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.) ..........
Seems to me that the professor "cloudy eyes" is a little upset that someone is calling her bluff.
Saying somone is on a campaign to "discredit and ruin progressive intellectuals" must have "the cloudy eyed professor" worried that someone may actually be talking some sense into the undergrads. I cannot stand the word "progressive" being applied to our youth. That is B$. She is teaching REGRESSIVE behavior.
Being a McCarthyite is a badge of honor when you enter the leftist dominated college campuses these days. While the Commintern and the Communists have been discredited worldwide, these lefty professors dominate the teaching positions in American colleges and universities.
Tenure given to these despicable people has to be eliminated and those giving such tenure to these worms should have to also answer.
Animal Farm circa 2005:
Ward Churchill good -- David Horowitz bad
Liberals can say anything they want, and it is "free speech"
Conservatives say anything, and it is "hate speech"
The mind reels
Your Tax Dollars At Work
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?
Sounds like the protestors were the ones who were blocking speech.
Underlying motive alert.
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.
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
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."