College students recently shouted down conservative speakers at Cornell, Penn State and the University of New Mexico, which free-speech advocates warn is a harbinger of a growing “heckler veto” that will further cancel conservative voices at America’s institutions of higher learning.
The nonpartisan Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) said that when Cornell University students shut down a Wednesday night talk by conservative pundit Ann Coulter, it advanced a disturbing trend.
“We condemn those students’ actions. Shouting down speakers and disrupting scheduled events is not free speech or peaceful protest — it’s an impermissible ‘heckler’s veto,’” FIRE said in the statement.
At the student-organized event at Cornell, students played circus music and screamed at Ms. Coulter. She retreated from the stage several minutes into the event as protesters cheered. One student yelled at her: “We don’t want you to speak here. Your words are violence. They’re threats. You cannot be speaking here.”
Cornell Vice President for University Relations Joel M. Malina issued an apology to Ms. Coulter, who graduated with honors from the Ivy League university in 1984.
“Cornell apologizes to Ms. Coulter and all members of the audience who hoped to hear her remarks. The inappropriate behavior displayed by disrupters does not reflect the university’s values,” Mr. Malina said in a statement.
He said the school issued conduct violations to eight students whom officials removed from the speaking venue for “playing loud music and sound effects” in addition to “shouting profanities.”
“Cornell is committed to academic excellence and a core belief that learning flourishes in an environment where diverse ideas are presented and debated without hindrance,” Mr. Molina said.
Ms. Coulter did not respond to a request for comment from The Washington Times.
The heckling incident follows two others in the past two months.
On Sept. 16 at the University of New Mexico, student protesters banged on the walls and pulled a fire alarm during a talk by conservative commentator and TV host Tomi Lahren.
Although police barricaded the door and university officials later reaffirmed their commitment to free speech, the protest cut Ms. Lahren’s Q&A session short and ended with police escorting her off campus.
On Oct. 24, student protesters armed with pepper spray forced Penn State officials to cancel a student-hosted comedy show featuring Proud Boys founder Gavin McInnes and comedian Alex Stein shortly before the event was to start.
The university reported protesters spitting on officials as they dispersed hundreds of students and cited “the threat of escalating violence” for stopping the event.
Zach Greenberg, a campus rights advocate at FIRE, said universities could do more to stop the disruptions.
“Universities must educate their students on the difference between peaceful protest and disrupting one’s right to speak,” Mr. Greenberg told The Times. “Shouting down, yelling over and silencing speakers deprives everybody of the right to listen to opposing views.”
Similar disruptions targeting conservatives also occurred at Yale University, the University of California and the University of North Texas earlier this year.
At the University of California, Hastings College of the Law on March 2, students taunted and screamed for an hour at libertarian constitutional scholar Ilya Shapiro, preventing him from giving a scheduled talk.
Mr. Shapiro resigned from Georgetown University Law Center in June after refusing to undergo racial sensitivity training over a Jan. 26 tweet predicting the Biden administration would nominate “a lesser Black woman” to the Supreme Court.
Also in March, students at the University of North Texas banged on tables and rang noisemakers to disrupt a talk by state legislative candidate Jeff Younger, prompting police to escort him out of a classroom 40 minutes short of his allotted time.
Later that month, more than 120 students packed a lecture hall at Yale Law School and yelled at a professor in an attempt to stop Kristen Waggoner, general counsel for the Christian legal advocacy group Alliance Defending Freedom, from participating in a panel discussion on civil liberties.
Jonathan Zimmerman, a professor in the history of education at the University of Pennsylvania, lamented the intolerance demonstrated by college students.
“This isn’t just a free-speech problem, it’s an educational one,” he said. “Put simply, some of our students have not learned the essential skills of democratic life: reason, civility, and tolerance for different points of view. We should use this moment to teach them.”
• Sean Salai can be reached at ssalai@washingtontimes.com.
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