The Crimson Defends the K-School 4
Today's Crimson editorializes in favor of the four protesters who shouted down FBI director Robert Mueller and were arrested at a Kennedy School event.
The Harvard University Police Department’s (HUPD) response to a group of unruly protesters at last week’s speech by Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Director Robert S. Mueller III demonstrated blatant disregard for established rules, past procedure, and—most importantly—common sense.
I respect the Crimson's passion, but it's wrong: The paper claims that it is arguing on behalf of free speech, when in fact it's arguing for the right to curtail free speech.
The whole thing lasted under two minutes, and the protesters planned on leaving quietly as soon as they were warned to do so by police. Instead the protesters were forcibly ejected, arrested, and charged criminally with disturbing a public assembly without ever receiving a warning.
This is an argument that has floated around since the arrest happened.
We would have stopped if you'd just asked us nicely.
This is, of course, an easy assertion to make after the fact. But there's as good a chance that it's not true as there's a chance that it is. The clear intention of the protest was to disrupt the event; had the protesters not been asked to leave, who's to say they wouldn't have continued their disruption indefinitely? One suspects they would have been delighted to have had the opportunity.
Remember, for example, the students who took over Mass Hall in the spring of 2001. According to the members of that group whom I interviewed, they fully expected to be arrested for their actions. (No, "Oh, you should have asked us to leave" here.) But when they weren't arrested, they were only too happy to continue their protest indefinitely. (Good for them on all counts, by the way. Unlike the K-School 4, they understood that the acceptance of the consequences of protest is what lends protest its moral seriousness.)
Here's another sentence I find puzzling.
In an academic community founded on the bedrock principle of the unfettered exchange of ideas, the threat of unwarned arrest would no doubt have a chilling effect on the quality of debate and discussion that goes on at Harvard.
The unfettered exchange of ideas? That is, of course, exactly what the protesters were trying to obstruct. Mueller was starting to give a speech; they shouted him down. That is not the unfettered exchange of ideas.
Now, the Crimson points out that the students were supposed to be warned. (An astute poster on the Crimson site points out that the regulations in question are those of the FAS, and the event was held at the Kennedy School, which is not a part of the FAS.)
HUPD acted in flagrant violation of cut-and-dry standing regulations....
But those regulations aren't cut-and-dried at all. In fact, they never stipulate that a warning must be issued before an arrest, they only discuss the beneficial effects achieved by the issuance of such a warning
.
The protesters should also not face sanctions from the Administrative Board of Harvard College. They have already been put through a trying ordeal thanks to University mistakes. A trying ordeal? A trying ordeal, Harvard alums will recall, is sitting in University Hall when police shoot tear gas through the windows, then beat the shit out of you with nightsticks. A few hours in the HUPD is not a trying ordeal, and if you think it is, then maybe you should get out of the protest business.
The Crimson is right that HUPD erred badly in its police report, and that should be a subject of further inquiry. On most everything else, though, this editorial is wrong.
