Top Official at Justice Dept. Says More Colleges Should Punish Hecklers

Matthew T. Nichols for the Dept. of Justice

Colleges should be doing more to deal with, and potentially punish, people who heckle campus speakers and shut down events, a top Justice Department official said in a speech on Thursday.

Jesse Panuccio, principal deputy associate attorney general, delivered the keynote address during the Symposium on Free Speech and Campus Violence and Disruption, held at Northwestern University. In a speech that echoed another, delivered in September by Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Panuccio admonished colleges for their speech codes and “free-speech zones.”

“One example is found at Clemson University, in South Carolina, which bans any ‘verbal’ act ‘which creates an … offensive educational, work, or living environment,’” he said. “But who is to decide what is offensive and what is favorable, what is grating and what is good?”

A spokesman for Clemson has told The Chronicle that the university “interprets and applies its policies concerning speech, including this provision of our Student Code, in a manner consistent with the law, including the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.”

Panuccio then turned his attention to what he called the “most dangerous” and “most visible” threat to speech on campuses: the “heckler’s veto,” which he described as speech that is silenced when a college prohibits it in advance or when a speaker is shouted down. His remarks relied heavily on a Brookings Institution study that drew fire from researchers for its methodology.

He cited what he called “mob rule” in incidents last year at Middlebury College, the College of William & Mary, Evergreen State College, and the University of California at Berkeley.

The Justice Department on Thursday filed a statement of interest in a lawsuit against Berkeley brought by conservative students who say their free-speech rights were infringed upon. It is at least the third statement of interest the department has filed in such a case since September.

“If schools would impose serious consequences on those who shut down events and engage in violence, it is likely such tactics would abate,” Panuccio said, lamenting that few have done so thus far. “Indeed,” he said, “some professors and administrators encourage or take part in some of this behavior.”

The U.S. Senate’s education committee held a hearing on campus free speech in October, and several Democrats on the panel argued that the real issue colleges must confront is a rise in “hate speech.” The senators sent a letter to Betsy DeVos, the education secretary, requesting a meeting on how the Education Department would help respond to the uptick in such speech on campuses.

Still, the Justice Department has made its position clear. “The U.S. Department of Justice is not standing on the sidelines while public universities violate students’ constitutional rights,” said the associate attorney general, Rachel L. Brand, in a Fox News column. “We are backing free-speech lawsuits against universities that violate the First Amendment.”

Adam Harris is a breaking-news reporter. Follow him on Twitter @AdamHSays or email him at adam.harris@chronicle.com.