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State of te Profession: Free Speech and the "Heckler's Veto"
By Martin Snyder
Some issues, once confronted and addressed, seem to fade forever away. Others seem to have a cyclical life, and, like B movie monsters, return in remakes to frighten viewers in successive generations. The problem of the "heckler's veto," the disruption of a speaker's presentation by audience members who disagree with the message or the messenger, has reared its monstrous head again.
Last December, Janis Besler Heaphy, the president and publisher of the Sacramento Bee, attempted to deliver the midyear graduation address to some 10,000 students and guests at California State University-Sacramento. When Heaphy raised questions about the appropriateness of the government's response to terrorism—limits on civil rights, racial profiling, and the establishment of military tribunals—some in the audience interrupted with clapping and foot stomping. Many greeted with applause actions that Heaphy considered problematic: the expansion of wiretapping, muzzling the press, and illegal detainment. University president Donald Gerth tried in vain to quiet the audience, and Heaphy stopped speaking after a clapping chant and further loud heckling erupted. As she noted later, "This was a message about civil liberties and our acceptance of differing points of view in American society. It's a message that needs to continue to be heard."
Heaphy, of course, was not the first campus speaker who has been booed off stage. Nearly twenty years ago, the Association's Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure spoke out in response to several instances in which Jeane Kirkpatrick, who was then United States ambassador to the United Nations, was prevented from completing her address to a university audience because of disruptions by people in attendance. The committee in its response to that situation emphasized that "the freedom to hear is an essential condition of a free university and an inseparable part of academic freedom." It further stated that: "Committee A deplores interference with the right of members of an academic community to hear on campus those whom they have invited to speak. . . . There can be no more appropriate forum for the discussion of controversial ideas and issues than the college and university campus."
The committee also reaffirmed its expectation that "all members of the academic community will respect the right of others to listen to those who have been invited to speak on campus and will indicate disagreement not by disruptive action designed to silence the speaker but by reasoned debate and discussion as befits academic freedom in a community of higher learning."
Unquestionably, there is a place for legitimate dissent and peaceful protest on campus, and the line between dissent and disruption may at times be hard to draw. Nevertheless, as citizens of a democratic society and the academic community, we all have the obligation to respect the right of others to speak, however offensive or abhorrent we may find their speech, however much the content or manner of their speech may irritate, anger, or outrage us. As U.S. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes put it, freedom of expression requires tolerance of "ideas we hate." Failing such tolerance, there can never be, in the words of Justice William J. Brennan, Jr., the "robust exchange of ideas which discovers truth out of a multitude of tongues."
Perhaps the principle at stake is most directly enunciated in the foregoing statement issued by Committee A in 1983 and endorsed by the American Council on Education, the National Coalition of Independent College and University Students, the National Organization of Black University and College Students, and the United States Student Association. The statement reaches this conclusion: "Unless there is freedom to speak and to teach, even for those with whom we differ on fundamentals, and unless there is freedom for all to listen and to learn, there can be no true college or university no matter how fine the buildings or modern the equipment."
Ironically, the disruption of the Cal State commencement did not silence Heaphy. Quite the contrary. What might have been a little noticed midyear commencement address at one of the less well-known institutions in the California state system became a national cause célèbre. Heaphy's remarks, posted on the university's Web site at President Gerth's behest, ultimately reached a worldwide audience. Because of the hecklers' disruption, the wisdom of her words, intended for thousands of local California residents, reached millions instead. The genie of free speech is not easily or willingly forced back into its bottle.
Martin Snyder is AAUP director of planning and development.
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