The Missing Link

February 21, 2006

Shouted Down

A student at Pomona College, my alma mater, is criticizing the all too common campus occurence of guest speakers being shouted down by protesters:

I attended the debate on Guantanamo Bay last week, and I found myself confronted by something I find very disturbing: a “liberal� protest that ran counter to everything I love about liberalism. The protest, which interrupted the question and answer period of the event, was simply rude and counterproductive.

Now generally I’m all about the liberal protest. I grew up in San Francisco. I’ve been called a terrorist by passersby while marching past police in full riot gear. I love being a liberal because to me being liberal means being open minded and questioning everything: the government, the army, the media, social structures, religion, prejudice, and, above all, myself. Which is why I enjoyed listening to John Yoo so much: he made me think and doubt some of my past assumptions. The question and answer portion presented an opportunity for faculty and students to participate in a dialogue with the presenters. The protesters interrupted this dialogue. They halted the learning process. They purposely stopped a process of discussion and questioning, the essence of liberalism, to make the point that some people here don’t like Bush. What a shocker. Somehow I think Yoo already knew that. And so I have a simple message to those protesters: stop making me look bad. Your actions, made in the name of liberalism, degraded liberalism and the value of protests. Your actions exemplify the type of liberalism that many resent here at Pomona, a liberalism that jumps down the throat of any conservative sentiment and stifles open discourse that everyone could learn from. I’ve seen this liberalism in classrooms, and I’m ashamed that the presenters had to witness it as well.

Liberal students on college campuses are far out of the American mainstream on most issues. They can express their views only because people who disagree with them value freedom of expression and tolerate ideas they disagree with. How ironic that these same students, whose views would surely lose out if public discourse turned into a shouting match, do their best to turn it into just that.

UPDATE: This piece suggests that the bulk of Pomona students behaved admirably.

Posted by Conor at February 21, 2006 06:10 PM