Berkeley Riots: Protest or Infringment of Rights

Question

The violence that preempted the talk of a prominent alt-right speaker on University of California Berkeley's campus has set off a debate over the role of free speech in American society. Did the protestors, by effectively making the area surrounding the planned talk so unsafe that it had to be cancelled, infringe on the speaker's first amendment rights? Or did they simply take a militant stance against perceived hate speech? Can it be both? It seems like a very complex issue and I'm not sure how to look at it yet.

Answer 1

Constitutional vs. human rights

Did the protestors, by effectively making the area surrounding the planned talk so unsafe that it had to be cancelled, infringe on the speaker's first amendment rights

Individuals cannot infringe on a speaker's first amendment rights in the United States. The first amendment is a restriction on federal power that was extended to state and local governments by the fourteenth amendment. By contrast, free speech is a natural human right, which can be blocked by other human action. Perhaps that is only a technical distinction, but it is also a legal distinction in the United States.

Infringing the first amendment

The first amendment claim is that local police were infringing on the speaker's first amendment rights by choosing not to control the violence of the protests. The question there is if they would have been equally hands off with a more liberal speaker being shouted down by conservative protesters or rioters. Of course, most protesters found on a college campus are going to be liberals, not conservatives. So it's hard to know.

Another legal issue is if official Democratic groups were involved either deliberately or accidentally in encouraging the protests. If so, the college could sue them for reimbursement of the damages. However, it seems unlikely that the college would pursue that normally. But the Trump administration may insist, as otherwise the college is wasting some of the money that the federal government pays it on repairing riot damage. Note that while the college could sue, it's unclear that there would be sufficient proof of intent such that the college would win.

Streisand effect

Note that there were a mixture of types of protesters in Berkeley. Some just wanted to use their own free speech rights and try to shout down Milo Yiannopoulos outside. Some seemed to want to disrupt the actual speech inside the hall or whatever. But then there were those that engaged in actual violence and vandalism.

Even if you sympathize with the protesters, you might consider the Streisand effect. Yiannopoulos has regular speaking engagements. But how many do you know? It's just Berkeley for me. If I had even seen a reference to a non-violent protest, I would have already forgotten it. But we'll be talking for days about this. And Yiannopoulos will be all over the news, giving him a much larger microphone than he had prior to this.

There are reasons why people like Mahatma Gandhi are famous for non-violent protests. Even those who disagree with them, can't disagree with their methods. By contrast, here, even people who agree that Yiannopoulos is an idiot can disagree with rioting. Yiannopoulos can now play the victim, where many view him more as a perpetrator.

Violent protest is stupid. It causes more reaction against than for. It is emotionally satisfying in the short term but damages the cause in the long term.

Answer 2

The short and technical answer is "no."

The First Amendment has been held to prohibit federal, state, and local governments from infringing on freedom of speech (though it is permissible to impose content-neutral time, place, and manner restrictions).

The protesters, not being the government, cannot infringe on rights.

There is a related issue as to whether the authorities involved could have constructively violated the speaker's rights by accepting what's called a "heckler's veto":

The common example is the termination of a speech or demonstration in the interest of maintaining the public peace based on the anticipated negative reaction of someone opposed to that speech or demonstration.

But "heckler's veto" is not a legal term of art and applies to a range of situations. It's one thing to disinvite a speaker because of disagreements or threatened protests, it's another to cancel an event due to imminent public safety concerns.

Answer 3

The questions of 'free speech' and 'academic freedom' at U.C. Berkeley was supposedly settled by the outcome of the 1964-1965 students' anti-Vietnam war "Free Speech Movement", and by the killing of three similarly protesting Kent State (Ohio) college students by Ohio National Guardsmen (ref. Wikipedia "Free Speech Movement", "Kent State shootings").

Although both events resulted in some administrative changes on both campuses and freer access to dissident opinion, the recent violent protest on the U.C. Berkeley campus have been completely antithetical to the ideology expressed a bit more than half a century ago on college campuses across the country.

The recent violent U.C. Berkeley student protests were intended to deny students and others from hearing a dissident speaker's thoughts and comments. That denial indicates that the unrelenting pressure on young people to conform to "political correctness" has caused a complete reversal of the underlying ideological concepts of 'freedom of speech' and 'academic freedom' among students at Berkeley over the past fifty years.

One must either observe long standing principles, or abide by the principles of "political correctness". As the saying goes, "No one can serve two masters".

Answer 4

Did the protestors, by effectively making the area surrounding the planned talk so unsafe that it had to be cancelled, infringe on the speaker's first amendment rights

the first amendment was establish against the government's infringing on the citizen's rights to speech. Not being any government entities, the violent protesters couldn't have possibly infringed on anyone's first amendment rights.

I'm sure they are violating others laws, however.

or simply take a militant stance against hate speech?

while there hasn't been challenges on that but hate speech laws are likely unconstitutional, as they are imposed by the government and should constitute direct infringement of the citizen's first amendment rights.

we have to remember that many good things were considered high offensive: abolishment of slavery, equal rights for women, civil rights, anti segregation, inter-racial marriages, LGBT rights, .... had we shut them down then as "hate speeches", we wouldn't have many things we enjoy today.

Answer 5

Of course they infringed on his right to free speech. You have a right to peacefully protest. This wasn't that. There were numerous assaults, you can read about one here, destruction of property, etc. But if you want to say that the protesters should be convicted for their violence rather than on civil rights violations, I would agree with you. They should.

But don't think that the speaker's civil rights weren't violated under both the public accommodations clause of the Civil Rights Act as well as the 14th Amendment.

One thing is for certain, the rioters didn't just take a militant stance. They actively engaged in something akin to domestic terrorism.

Answer 6

Did the protestors, by effectively making the area surrounding the planned talk so unsafe that it had to be cancelled, infringe on the speaker's first amendment rights or simply take a militant stance against hate speech? Can it be both? It seems like a very complex issue and I'm not sure how to look at it yet.

No some of the protesters violated the rights of everyone who wanted to attend the speech. Presumably you could make a guess that 90% of the attendees agreed with the speaker and 10% would have been there to gather evidence against him / his ideology (which frankly I do not know).

What can we do? In Canada they passed a law making it unlawful to wear a mask at a demonstration or protest. A similar law should be passed in the USA. Jail time will make these violent acts of rage relatively infrequent.

The politician who publicly stated she supported these violent acts should be jailed for inciting / justifying acts of violence.

This is an embarrassment to the people of America and they should demand the President come down hard on individuals in future violent actions when the "mob rules". Should local law enforcement, for example San Francisco Police Force decide to go on strike and not enforce new laws such as I propose, then the USA military can be ordered to go in and enforce laws effectively. They should have lots of experience by now from Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya and will not be as gentle as the average American Police force who usually only empty a few 9-shot clips into those fleeing arrest.