Updated (10/6/2017, 9:35 a.m.) with a statement by the Black Lives Matter group at William & Mary.
The protesters who shouted down a speaker from the American Civil Liberties Union at the College of William & Mary last week weren’t engaging in free speech, but deploying a “classic example of a heckler’s veto” aimed at stifling debate, the executive director of the ACLU’s Virginia office said on Thursday.
“Actions that bully, intimidate or disrupt must not be without consequences,” the official, Claire Guthrie Gastañaga, said in a written statement delivered a week after students affiliated with the campus chapter of the Black Lives Matter movement prevented her from speaking.
They were objecting to the state ACLU’s decision to represent a white supremacist, Jason Kessler, in his lawsuit against the City of Charlottesville, Va., after it tried to revoke his permit for the “Unite the Right” rally in August.
A judge sided with the ACLU and rejected the city’s effort to move the demonstration outside of downtown.
Violent clashes broke out that month in Charlottesville between white nationalists and counter-protesters. At the rally, a car driven by a white nationalist rammed into a crowd of people, killing a woman and injuring dozens of others.
Feelings about those events are particularly raw in Virginia, where the College of William & Mary is located. The event that made the Williamsburg college the latest flash point in the battle over free speech started last Friday when Ms. Gastañaga took to the podium to deliver a talk on “Students and the First Amendment.”
It is a classic example of a heckler’s veto, and, appropriately, can be prohibited by a college student code of conduct, as it is at William and Mary.
Unbeknownst to her, the audience was about to get a real-life demonstration of what happens when protesters test the limits of that amendment.
She was going to talk to them, she said, about their rights during protests and demonstrations.
Shortly after she started to speak, demonstrators began marching toward the stage, dressed mostly in black and holding signs with messages including “liberalism is white supremacy” and “blood on your hands.”
“Good — I like this,” Ms. Gastañaga said as the opportunity to prove her point seemed to present itself. She was soon drowned out, though, by chants, shouted in unison, that included “ACLU, you protect Hitler, too” and “ACLU — free speech for who?”
The Williamsburg Black Lives Matter group livestreamed the event on its Facebook page and took credit for shutting it down after the student-run group that arranged the forum, Alma Mater Productions, decided there was no point in continuing.
“In contrast to the ACLU, we want to reaffirm our position of zero tolerance for white supremacy no matter what form it decides to masquerade in,” the Facebook post read.
Two days after the protest, the college’s president, W. Taylor Reveley III, issued a written statement condemning the group’s tactics.
“Silencing certain voices in order to advance the cause of others is not acceptable in our community,” he wrote. “This stifles debate and prevents those who’ve come to hear a speaker, our students in particular, from asking questions, often hard questions, and from engaging in debate where the strength of ideas, not the power of shouting, is the currency.”
A campus spokesman, Brian Whitson, said the college would continue to host events that address uncomfortable topics, but that it was reviewing its “planning and protocols” to ensure this kind of disruption didn’t happen again.
He said federal privacy laws prevented him from discussing possible sanctions against any students, but he added that the college was taking the matter seriously and would take “appropriate action.” Disrupting or shutting down an event violates several provisions of the student conduct code, Mr. Whitson said. Punishments can range from expulsion to educational activities related to the offense.
Disruptive protests have prompted sanctions in recent months at Evergreen State College and Middlebury College.
William & Mary’s Black Lives Matter group, which has never sought official recognition from the college, defended its action in a statement Thursday night on its Facebook page.
“The ACLU consciously chose to intervene on behalf of organized white supremacy in Charlottesville,” it said. “We find this intolerable. Members of our organization were struck by the car that killed Heather Heyer on August 12th — our protest of the ACLU event on September 27th was driven by our firm belief that white supremacy does not deserve a platform. The right to free speech is a fundamental human right. However, speech that condones, supports or otherwise fails to explicitly condemn injustice must be directly confronted.”
‘Horribly Ironic’ Episode
As news of the protest was picked up by conservative media outlets, it quickly became Exhibit A for groups that have accused college students of trying to isolate themselves from ideas they object to.
“Shutting down discussion and debate when one disagrees with it does not serve the repressed and marginalized people” the protesters were defending, said Ari Cohn, director of the individual-rights defense program at the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, known as FIRE.
In contrast to the ACLU, we want to reaffirm our position of zero tolerance for white supremacy no matter what form it decides to masquerade in.
Because marginalized people are so often censored, preventing a discussion about free speech is “horribly ironic and very sad and frankly shameful,” he said.
About 20 minutes into the protest, the group read a prepared statement in which it accused the ACLU of being “on the wrong side of history” for many years.
“By hiding behind the rhetoric of the First Amendment and free speech, the ACLU has provided a platform for the most extreme forms of white supremacy,” it said. “When is the free speech of the oppressed protected? We know from personal experience that rights granted to wealthy, white, cis, male, straight bodies do not trickle down to marginalized groups. We face greater barriers and consequences for speaking. The ACLU and liberals believe that legality determines morality. Not too long ago, the constitution dictated that Black people only count as 3/5ths of a person. The Constitution cannot be your moral compass.”
Students who were still eager to talk with Ms. Gastañaga gathered around her, but they were surrounded by protesters who shouted down their questions, according to an account in the student newspaper.
Confusing Protest With Disruption
Eric D. Chason, an associate professor of law and member of the university’s Faculty Assembly, said he and his colleagues were eager to hear how the administration planned to minimize the chances of future disruptions. The Faculty Assembly’s executive committee plans to discuss the matter at its meeting on Tuesday.
“Student groups shouldn’t be allowed to shut down or shout down campus events,” Mr. Chason said. “People often get confused about the difference between protesting and disrupting something,” and there are ways to avoid crossing that line, he said. “You can protest before or after the speech, bring signs, or ask the questions you want answered during the event.”
If students are sanctioned, the punishments meted out should not be influenced by sympathy for a group’s viewpoint or by a desire to look tough in the glare of the national spotlight, Mr. Chason said.
In a statement released in August, the Virginia ACLU chapter explained why it agreed to represent Mr. Kessler in his case against the City of Charlottesville. It did so before the violent clashes took place and only after he assured them the event would be peaceful, it said.
Representing him “wasn’t an affirmation of his views — which we abhor — any more than our advocacy for due process rights for sex offenders is an endorsement of child abuse; any more than our advocacy for freedom of religion signals support for the use of religion as a justification for discrimination,” the group said.
The case was, it said, about “viewpoint discrimination,” the evidence that must be presented in order to revoke a permit and “whether the voices opposing a person’s speech can be preferred by government and allowed to drive out speech that is deeply offensive to others.”
Safeguarding the First Amendment requires that the police, including campus security, protect events when there is a threat of violence, it said, and to “withstand the criticism that comes with affording constitutionally required protection to those with odious ideas.”
Without a safe, secure place for the free expression of ideas, it said, “there can be no true freedom in academic, artistic, scientific, or political affairs.”
In her statement Thursday, Ms. Gastañaga said her group supports the goals espoused by the demonstrators at William & Mary, including ending white supremacy and achieving racial justice.
“It is more than disappointing, however, when the robust debate that should be the hallmark of the culture of inquiry on a college campus is disrupted by those who seek with their own voices or actions simply to silence others who took actions or hold views based on principles with which they disagree,” she said.
She went on to say that disruption that prevents someone from speaking or audience members from hearing what was said is not constitutionally protected speech, “even on a public college campus subject to the First Amendment. It is a classic example of a heckler’s veto, and, appropriately, can be prohibited by a college student code of conduct, as it is at William and Mary.”
Katherine Mangan writes about community colleges, completion efforts, and job training, as well as other topics in daily news. Follow her on Twitter @KatherineMangan, or email her at katherine.mangan@chronicle.com.
