Claremont McKenna lastest to allow protestors to shut down conservative speaker

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2017/04/10/she-wanted-to-criticize-black-lives-matter-in-a-college-speech-a-protest-shut-her-down/?utm_term=.3c80f33fdfb2

Why don’t they just have the same rules as they do concerning those protesting abortion clinics? You can protest but you cannot inhibit anyone from using the facility and you must stay a certain distance from the venue. Violence carries it’s own penalties. It’s not the protesting that is the problem. It is the preventing others from participating in a lawful presentation. They are inhibiting the rights of others.

Diversity at a college often means people with different skin color; but no other differences.
I hate to see school officials complicit with any protest.

It’s kind of obvious not all of these kids are from CMC which raises an interesting question: If a sizable portion were from the other 5Cs, who’s in charge of their discipline?

https://heatst.com/culture-wars/students-free-speech-is-for-bigots-college-must-apologize-for-hosting-fascist-heather-mac-donald/

Well, at least they are in college so they have an opportunity to learn.

Anyone interested in free speech issues might want to look up FIRE (Foundation for Individual Rights in Education). They provide an evaluation of your child’s school or potential school so you can judge for yourself. I was pleased to see that two of my child’s top 3 schools had a “green rating” Purdue and University of Maryland. Surprisingly, Georgia Tech did not.

https://www.thefire.org

Anyone interested in FIRE should check this out:

“FIRE” is a partisan ideological astroturf group, funded by such delightful interest groups as “The John Templeton Foundation,” which “tries to encourage the integration of religious beliefs and free-market principles into the classroom.”

More “FIRE” funders:

The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation

The Sarah Scaife Foundation

Castle Rock Foundation (donor to the Promise Keepers and the vile “Strategy to Privatize the Public Domain”).

The Claude R. Lamb Charitable Foundation (the Koch brothers).

And anyone interested in campus free speech issues should read this:

https://socialistworker.org/2017/04/12/whos-behind-the-free-speech-crisis-on-campus

$60K/yr and they are afraid of a conservative speaker. What are they spoon-feeding the students? The hyperbole is just getting ridiculous.

Claremont McKenna’s “Policy on Demonstrations” clearly prohibits what took place at the MacDonald event. The school’s administration chose not to enforce that policy. Instead they live streamed her event to the campus but that meant she spoke to an empty room. She was also denied the opportunity to interact with her audience and the students who wanted to hear her speak were denied the opportunity to participate in the the usual Q and A that follows these events.

Seems like it is going to be up to the students to enforce their own rights. Time and time again we see administrations shy away from enforcing the policies that all students are bound by when they enroll. One sector of the student population is required to “give” while the others willfully ignore school policy and shut speakers down.

I don’t understand how administrations expect to be taken seriously if they allow themselves to be held hostage in this manner.

That policy is a far more worrisome attack on free speech and expression than the cancellation, imo.

How so? It provides for peaceful demonstrations but ensures that people you might want to hear speak actually get the opportunity to do so. Sounds equitable and reasonable to me.

And if the policy is of concern to anyone then they simply should not enroll at Claremont McKenna.

I agree with @lvvcsf . This should be treated like protests at abortion clinics. You can protest but not block access or physically harass or impede people who are trying to enter the building. Here are some links to articles in the CMC student newspaper about this: http://cmcforum.com/news/04072017-cmc-administration-responds-to-student-protest and http://cmcforum.com/opinion/04132017-take-care-protest-has-consequences. Basically it sounds like the administration underestimated the size of the protest and wasn’t prepared for the protesters to blockade the entrance. The discipline situation is complicated by the fact that a lot of the protestors were not CMC students. It also seems like the administration is still grappling with how to prevent this in the future. But CMC takes great pride in the Athenaeum as a venue for speakers, so I do think they will try hard not to let a blockade happen again. My D is a Pomona student but takes a class at CMC and the information in the article was consistent with what her professor said about the administration’s reaction.

CMC’s policy includes the following:

and

That definition of “disruptive” would render virtually all meaningful protest unacceptable. Protest should be protected speech. Free speech advocates often argue that the solution to offensive or inappropriate speech is “more speech.” Well, protests are precisely that. This policy is so broad that the college essentially reserves the right to prevent virtually any form of protest. That’s a far bigger deal than a single speaker missing out on “Q&A” sessions or whatever happened here.

You could say the same about those who are concerned about not being able to hear a particular speaker. See?
And if the shutdown of a conservative speaker is of concern to anyone thn they simply should not enroll at Claremont McKenna.
This gets us nowhere.

Not at all. If the audience and the speaker are permitted entry to the building without being blocked and the speaker’s event is not shut down then they are in compliance with the policy. It’s pretty simple. They can protest but they cannot infringe on the rights of their fellow students by shutting down the event.

This makes no sense Marvin. There is a policy in place that curtails protests that interfere with the rights of others. As a student contemplating enrollment I would have every expectation that the administration would enforce that policy. So I will repeat that it looks like these students will have to be more aggressive in enforcing their rights which are clearly set out under school policy.

Read the rule again–it’s far, far broader and less precise than your characterization of it.

It seems to me it’s only broader and less precise if your goal is to prohibit someone from speaking or others from hearing them speak. Otherwise it seems pretty clear.

The language is quite clear – you can’t impede access to an activity or a facility. Not sure how you can read those words and come up with any other conclusion. Most schools have similar language in their policies – it’s nothing new.

There’s a post on the Pomona board in which a Pomona student comments on the MacDonald protest incident and activism on campus in general: http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/discussion/comment/20574737/#Comment_20574737 (see #6). And I already linked to an opinion piece in the CMC student paper about the protests: http://cmcforum.com/opinion/04132017-take-care-protest-has-consequences. I think it’s fair to say that there is dissatisfaction in both the student body and the administrations of the 5C’s with the blockading of the speaker, but no one seems sure what to do about it. CMC is having their alumni weekend this weekend, and Pomona has its alumni weekend next weekend. I have to think that the administration will hear from some alumni about this.

@marvin100 Thank you for that link. It appears that the article supports FIRE, (though apparently not some of the comments made by one of its founders). In fact here is a direct quote from that article:

"Even Robert Shibley, the author of the Washington Post article quoted above, would have to admit the complicity of university administrations in creating this authoritarian atmosphere. His own organization, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), has covered hundreds of cases of administrative repression, which makes his smears against student protesters doubly bizarre.

In fact, FIRE’s attorneys recently began a campaign that socialists should support, which attempts to end the practice of university administrations establishing “free-speech zones” on campuses, outside of which protest or assembly are prohibited."

I don’t know what Mr. Shipley’s up to, but everyone can support FIRE. Thanks again for the link.

I also really don’t care who donates to FIRE. I donate to a National park Foundation, and I’m pretty sure there are some real whackos that do, too. Even whackos can be right occasionally. At any rate, FIRE is extremely successful at what they do. Often, it only takes a letter from them to get a school to fix their anti-free speech policies, that’s how respected they are. But when they sue on behalf of students they almost always win.

Parents- Check out your child’s school here:

https://www.thefire.org

Yes, @PBD , the article supports some of FIRE’s work (as do I!). It’s totally possible for an organization with repellent ideology to be on the right side of some issues.