Minutemen Pigs at Columbia

because you may not have Times Select i'll paste a few paragraphs from stanley fish's analysis of why -- and yeppers, i totally agree -- the recent protest turned pseudo-melee at Columbia, which resulted in the minutemen being shouted off stage, was neither a violation of their rights but, in my mind, a true intervention by liberals who are sick of tolerating intolerance.

fish is no liberal activist. he's a law/literature professor of great reknown and moderate political ideology. i quote:

"The first thing to note is that although the aborted lecture was to have been given in an academic venue, the occasion was not itself academic; it was theatrical. Any education that might have transpired had Mr. Gilchrist been allowed to give his talk would have been incidental to the shock value of his appearance before an audience known in advance to be hostile to his message. That was why he was invited, not to impart instruction but to provoke a response (and it is the response rather than the content that is always focused on in media reports), although in this instance those who brought him to campus got more than they bargained for. The spirit presiding over this occasion from the beginning was more Jerry Springer than Socrates. Jeers, catcalls, insults and (verbal) brickbats were not intrusions on the performance, but predictable ingredients of it; had they been absent, organizers and audience alike would have gone away disappointed because they would not have gotten their student-fees worth. It’s just that things got a little out of hand.

When I call the occasion theatrical, I am not registering a criticism. Theater is what it is supposed to be, and theater is what it would also be were another student group to invite Noam Chomsky or Michael Moore. The intention, whoever the invitee, is not to analyze an issue, but to “stir things up,” a euphemism for the intention to tick somebody off. Chris Kulawick, the student president of the group sponsoring the talk, made this crystal clear when he said it was his dearest wish 'to attain the cherished title of "Most Despised Person on Campus."'

...It follows that the editorial page of The New York Post was wrong (as usual) when it demanded that the Columbia administration “expel each and every one of the guilty students.” Guilty of what? Apparently no one was hurt, so the answer cannot be guilty of assault; even guilty of attempted assault would be a stretch. Guilty of a violation of Mr. Gilchrist’s free speech rights? He has no constitutional right not to be shouted down or hounded off the stage. No government has abridged his freedom of expression. And he can give his talk elsewhere (no doubt he already has) or come back and give it at Columbia when the university has instituted better crowd-control measures. At most, the students are guilty of being impolite, bumptious and rowdy, but again, this is the kind of behavior that the event – more akin to a keg party than to a reasoned discussion – was designed to elicit."