Editorial: Heckling can’t resolve disputes

Growing up in the American primary education system, we’re taught to stand up for what we… Growing up in the American primary education system, we’re taught to stand up for what we believe in. Democracy, we’ve been told, can only boast legitimacy when it freely allows even those holding the most unpopular views to voice them. Of the Enlightenment philosophies the United States was built upon, free speech formed a crucial pillar, a bedrock that continues to benefit us today.

But it’s important to note that louder speech might not always be freer. As a story out of California prompts us to ask: Is standing up for your beliefs synonymous with standing up to a public presentation you disagree with? What place does heckling a public event have in a free society — our country’s and also Pitt’s?

According to the Los Angeles Times, 11 University of California – Irvine and University of California – Riverside students — the so-called “Irving 11” — were criminally charged last week for conspiring to interrupt a speech attempted last year at UC Irvine by Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren. Speaking in front of an audience of about 500 people on UC Irvine’s campus in February 2010, Oren was interrupted by 10 outbursts of shouting. Threats to the ambassador were largely absent from the heckling, as the first offender simply criticized Israeli policy, saying, “Propagating murder is not an expression of free speech.” Believed to be part of the Muslim Student Union, offenders were promptly removed and arrested by on-site police officers.

For the year following the event, the university had exclusively handled the disciplinary response, temporarily suspending the Muslim Student Union and privately disciplining the student hecklers. But now that Orange County, Calif., prosecutors are pursuing criminal charges against the students, a reactionary fervor is brewing in the community. The Boston Globe reported that protesters assembled this week in front of the Orange County district attorney’s office and local religious leaders signed an open letter asking the district attorney not to indict the students.

The plight of the “Irving 11” highlights a widely disputed area of First Amendment law. Court rulings on the constitutionality of shouting down a speaker have been sparse and vague, thought by many to allow law enforcement to remove hecklers if officers predict — but not preemptively — that violence could erupt secondary to the heckling. Though the government can’t legally suppress peaceful heckling on its own behalf, private organizations — like most universities — can. For example, Pitt’s Student Code of Conduct binds students to behave in ways that do “not interfere with the educational process,” an interference that could easily be ascribed to heckling.

Although we publish each morning under the name of The Pitt News and not The Pitt Constitutional Scholar, we can still understand the threat that “Irving 11”-style heckling poses to the educational process. People shouldn’t voluntarily enroll in a university to buzz their vocal chords so as to drown out dissenting opinion; instead their time would be better spent civilly participating in the collegiate marketplace of ideas. Universities like UC Irvine and Pitt offer an invaluable opportunity for students to not only find people who disagree with them, but also to learn how to interact with these people to somehow build a better world.

That’s why universities should at least be allowed to protect their educational environments from the dangers of heckling. Though criminal charges of impassioned college hecklers, even in cases of premeditated heckling, might be going too far.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict arouses strong emotions in people across the globe, including people on Pitt’s campus, with both sides touting legitimate arguments and enduring terrible hardships. But silencing tactics are no step toward resolution.