Removing His Boss From Office, on the Other Hand…
By In this interesting discussion of whether a group of students at Brown was justified in shouting down Ray Kelly, I think Katha Pollitt gets to the heart of the question:
What did shouting down Ray Kelly achieve? What did it win for campus organizers and the larger movement against aggressive policing in black communities? Why was it a better idea than informational picketing, holding a teach-in or other counter event, campaigning for a speaker of one’s own, letting Kelly speak and questioning him sharply in the Q-and-A portion of the evening?
This is not a pure free speech issue; Ray Kelly does not have the right to a forum at Brown, per se. By the same token, I think underlying principles of free speech, comity, and political communication compel the conclusion that people should be heard and then responded to rather than shouted down barring unusual circumstances. Did these exist here? I believe Adam Serwer is correct:
