Counter-speech or heckler's veto?

There are some troubling aspects to this edition of FIRE's So to Speak podcast on the Manhattan Institute's Heather MacDonald being a victim of a heckler's veto. MacDonald was shouted down at Claremont-McKenna College, where she had been invited to give a talk on her new book on policing. In the interview, she describes speaking to an empty room, because student protesters outside had blockaded the entrance, and the talk ending early because the university refused to let police disperse the protesters. MacDonald wrote about her experiences.

My free-speech positions generally align with FIRE's, so I was surprised by the problems I found with the discussion:

1) It does not appear they have grappled with the protected nature of some of the protesters' activities (MacDonald allowed at one point that they were "arguably" within First Amendment protection). All heckling seems to constitute a heckler's veto in their telling. Except heckling a speaker is constitutionally protected, including to the point of trying to shout down or drown out that speaker, with the hope that she will give up and go away. (I like to point to the scene in Casablanca with the competing songs). So is asking snarky questions during the Q&A. So is pounding on drums and chanting. There is a line to be drawn somewhere and I admit to not knowing precisely where that is. Blockading the entrance or pounding on the glass is over the line. So is invading the speaker's space or trying to grab the microphone. But shouting from across the way must be protected. And there is an ocean between those.

The  undercurrent to the interview is that the First Amendment (as opposed to civility or a Platonic ideal of polite exchange of ideas) requires those who oppose ideas to allow those ideas a polite hearing. But this privileges the position of the invited speaker (MacDonald) to say what she wants and she wants to, imposing  on others to give her a polite listen and only engage in counter-speech (supposedly the remedy to be applied) on her terms. Rather, counter-speech, no less than "original" speech, may be vehement, caustic, and unpleasantly sharp. Counter-speech, no less than "original" speech, can produce the verbal tumult, discord, and dverbal cacophony that is not a sign of weakness but of strength.

Again, do not hear me as saying that the protesters were entirely in the right. Only that there is a First Amendment element that went almost entirely unacknowledged throughout the interview and MacDonald' narrative.

2) At one point the podcast host describes the right to free speech as a two-sided coin--the right of the speaker to speak and the right of willing listeners to listen, both of which were undermined by the protesters. But this, again, ignores the third side (making this a triangular dreidel?) of the rights of the protesters to counter-speak.

3) A different theme in MacDonald's comments, especially in the interview, is that she is in the right because the protesters attempting to shout her down are "arrogant" and "ignorant" (and arrogant in their ignorance). They are wrong about Black Lives Matter and the problem of police-involved shootings. And if they only knew what she did--such as the story of one elderly person in Chicago who would like to see a greater police presence--they would shut up and listen to her. And their failure to shut up and listen to her and her correct ideas (as opposed to their ignorant ones) represents their abandonment of respect for the First Amendment.

4) MacDonald called out the CMC faculty for not getting involved. Her solution is that when a controversial speaker is coming to campus, faculty members should take class time, regardless of subject, to give a talk to students explaining that they are expected to "maintain the highest ideals of civilization, which is rational discourse." That lecture should take place in a chemistry class or a philosophy class or a literature class.

But isn't the great conservative criticism of academia and academic that professors ignore what they are supposed to be teaching in the classroom (the atomic weight of Bromide or whatever) to instead "brainwash" (a word MacDonald used several times in the interview) students about that prof's favored political ideals. That seems to be what MacDonald is urging here. Except instead of brainwashing them about Marxism, she wants them to brainwash them about her vision of free expression. So I guess it is ok, as long as the professor is brainwashing the student about MacDonald's preferred political ideal.

5) Somewhat related, I would flag this piece in the Chronicle of Higher Ed (subscription required) by my colleague Stanley Fish, who attempts to separate the values of the university from free speech values. He argues that the guest speakers and protests and everything else have nothing to do with academic or university values. They represent political speech to which the university has chosen to open its doors and spaces. Which is fine, but has nothing to do with academic freedom or the core purposes of a university.

6) And this post from Max Stearns' Blindspot, which develops a "vaccine" theory of public debate, in which there is value to exposure to small amounts of noxious ideas. Again, as a model of public debate, this is interesting. But it leaves many open questions about how to account for counter-speech within a model of First Amendment jurisprudence.