11 U. of California Students Charged With Disrupting Campus Speech

A local district attorney charged 11 students on Friday for their alleged roles in organizing and orchestrating a protest last February in which an invited speaker at the University of California at Irvine, the Israeli ambassador to the United States, was repeatedly heckled and eventually shouted down. According to the Los Angeles Times, the Orange County district attorney accused the students—eight at Irvine and three at the university system’s Riverside campus—of “a preplanned violation of the law.” In the aftermath of the speech, the university took the unusual step of suspending a campus group, the Muslim Students Union, for planning to disrupt the event. Members of the group denied that they had done so, but the district attorney said they had met several times in the days before the event and had exchanged e-mail to plan a deliberate obstruction of the ambassador’s appearance. The 11 students were each charged with two misdemeanors and, if convicted, could face fines, probation with community service, and a six-month jail term.