When New York City Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly was invited to Brown University to give a speech on Oct. 29, student and community protesters drowned him out, booing and reading tracts explaining why they opposed his policing tactics like the controversial stop-and-frisk policy. With these actions — ebullient, youthful and angry — they were doing exactly what the core principle of free speech suggests they should: combatting Kelly’s speech with their own. In this case, the protesters’ speech happened to be louder, and the Kelly’s talk was interrupted about 30 minutes in. Many, including the university administration, immediately decried the activists as uncouth and even deserving of punishment.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=206649