Earlier this week, protesters at the University of California, Berkeley, violently stop an event organized by a group of Jewish students, attended by Israeli lawyer Ran Bar-Yoshafat. Protesters organized by the student group Bears for Palestine prevented students from entering the building where the speech was supposed to take place, chanted “Long live the intifada” and broke the glass doors.
Several students who attempted to attend the event say they were physically attacked by the protesters. One participant says he was grabbed by the neck and another says he was spat on.
“It was an extremely scary experience,” said Berkeley student Veda Keyvanfar said Fox News Wednesday. “The door of the venue was torn from my hand by a mob of protesters and my hand was injured in the process… as students we are allowed to host any type of speakers, and to attend any event we want, we are not allowed wrong.”
The disruption wasn’t simply a protest that got out of hand: it was a pre-planned attempt to stop the event from going ahead. An Instagram post from Bears for Palestine about the event said, “We are ‘fighting the lies’ by SHUTTING IT DOWN,” adding that Bar-Yoshafat “is a genocide denier and we will not allow this event to continue.”
The event was canceled after university officials determined they could not ensure the safety of students “given the size of the crowd and the threat of violence,” according to one university. declaration. Sstudents attending the event had to be escorted out the back of the building. According to the Associated Press, the local police department received multiple calls during the event, and a university spokesperson confirmed that the school was opening a criminal investigation into the students’ behavior.
So far, Berkeley’s administration has taken a strong stance against students who disrupted Monday’s event.
“We deeply respect the right to protest as it is intrinsic to the values of a democracy and an institution of higher education,” it said in a Tuesday declarationt by Chancellor Carol Christ and Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost Benjamin Hermalin. “However, we cannot ignore protest activity that interferes with the rights of others to hear and/or express views of their choosing. We cannot allow the use or threat of force to violate the First Amendment rights of a speaker, no matter how much we might disagree with their opinions.”
Video of the protesters received significant attention on social media, leading to calls to expel or discipline students involved in the unrest.
“Everyone has the right to due process. But violent rioters have no place in any institution dedicated to the courageous pursuit of truth. Certainly not in Berkeley, home of the Free Speech Movement,” said the president of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) Greg Lukianoff and FIRE senior writer Angel Eduardo wrote in a recent article about THE Free printing“Violence is not extreme discourse, but the antithesis of discourse and the antithesis of what higher education should be.”
Lukianoff and Eduardo are right: If you care about ensuring college students’ right to free speech, it is absolutely necessary to punish disruptive and violent protesters. While students have the right to peacefully protest an event, preventing people from listening to a speaker, damaging a building, and physically assaulting attendees obviously crosses the line into unsafe conduct.
The only way to prevent speaker disruption is for administrators to take a clear stand against them and punish those responsible. When universities crack down on violent or disruptive protest tactics, they set a precedent and send a clear message to student activists who are planning to protest an event: that disruptive, speech-suppressing conduct will not be tolerated.