Your lengthy argument is well-written, but falsely premised: (1) there is no necessity in logic or in principle that “the architecture of discourse” in each and every event or occurence of public speech be symetrical – I infer that by that you mean that each “side” or “position” be given an equal opportunity to be heard on each and every occasion. In fact, such a requirement is impossible to meet. Only one person may speak at any given time. Given that physical property is a necessity to disseminate one’s views, only one view may be heard at any given venue (excepting those circuses we often see disguised as political debates). Even at such “debates”, only one speaker may speak at a time, else there is no exchange of ideas or thoughts, only a childish shouting contest.

Any population is entirely cabable of retaining the substance – at least an outline thereof – of any given presentation long enough to be able to hear a rebuttal given, even hours, days, weeks, or longer after an opposing viewpoint has been presented. You betray your lack of faith in the intelligence and capacity of your fellow humans by implying that they must have the protection of such paragons of fairness as the protestors at this presentation from the sort of devious and evil-minded propaganda the speaker here presented. The history of the human race, overall, and especially with regard to the appearance of the notions which comprise Western political philosophies of freedom – from which label I free socialism and its variants – proves the inaccuracy of your assertions about how free speech genuinely works to produce freedom. That the result may not be to your liking – or even to mine for that matter – is an insufficient reason to rationalize threats of violence and the like as proper alternatives to a genuinely free exchange of ideas, allowing our fellows to reach their own conclusions, uncoerced by your – or my – views of what constitutes “proper” speech or presentation of thoughts.

There is no middle ground between “non-disruptive protest” and criminal violence. There is no principled method to silence speakers and topics and words and ideas which are repugnant to us, no matter how strongly we believe those ideas to be wrong or noxious, no matter how much smarter and stronger and more knowledgeable we believe ourselves to be than are our fellows. There is either free speech or there is not free speech.

In this case I specifically said that Sorba represented the ‘outside’ non-privileged view and the smith students were operating from a position of power, but this isn’t always the case with protests.

Also, godwin’s law.

However, preventing speech by being a thug is what the Nazi’s and the Fascists did in WWII, what the islamofascists are doing today. And, sadly, is what these students did. And, what they did was in no way ‘inclusive’, tolerant, nor designed to stimulate the exchange of ideas and information.

We can visualize the marketplace of ideas operating and we can stipulate that the noxious ideas of Mr. Sorba would find no takers and would soon be replaced by some different speech. Presumably that exchange would and should take place after people access the relative merits of the ideas and decide to support one or another. On the whole I feel this is a proper, though strained, analogy. Given this premise of meritocratic reward for “good” speech and marginalization of “bad” speech, the Smith students’ acts were reprehensible. they circumvented this mechanism and replaced discourse with their views.

But….I’m finding it terribly hard to make some general claim as to the protected nature of speech from protest. When the architecture of discourse is not symmetric, as in a lecture hall with one speaker before an audience, one speaker is operationally favored. Even worse are cases where the speaker himself (or herself) controls the venue, either explicitly or implicitly through the use of plants in the audience to softball questions, etc. In those cases the opportunities for protest that represent countervailing speech acts (and not suppression of the speech in question) are very limited. If the venue allows for a rebuttal time, then one person may respond. If questions are allowed, then questions may be asked (although these frustrate me to no end when used as avenues for soapboxing).

This is not a problem if you accept the fundamental assumption that everyone (on average) is capable of telling rotten messages from good ones and therefore the broadcast of rotten messages will likely have no ill effect. This is what pains me. I DESPERATELY want to believe this. I’m in school to be an economist, and this is kinda the fundamental basis for the profession: that we are, on the aggregate, actually capable of looking out for our best interests. But I don’t know. Certainly the students had this in mind when they unilaterally decided that their interpretation of Sorba’s speech would suffice as a proxy for others. If you accept that as given (as some on feminisiting probably do), then they might be justified in stopping his speech.

Presumably the logic would go something like this (either one of two ways or both):

1. The continuation of his speech without strident protest might represent some tacit normative approval for the values behind his speech. This approval might be seen to stem from the university or from the students attending and approval of his views goes against everything that the student body is thought to believe in. there are a lot of ifs here, and I’m not defending the reasoning, just speculating on it.

2. More likely, the students felt that they had (as in #1) a superior understanding of the merits of Sorba’s speech than others might. They also felt that the nature of the platform and the repetition of the speech itself would inculcate these views into others or (intertwined with the above point) give them the impression that the ideas behind the speech represented some normatively good thing. This is (more so than #1) at its core a paternalistic notion. The students would foreclose on future speech out of some concern for the weak-minded nature of possible audiences for that speech. That particular line of logic has a long and storied history with tyrants.

But I think that while these two lines of logic are statist (were they beliefs held by the state), they aren’t necessarily as toxic when held by those out of power. Or, to be more clear, these are not bad positions to operate from when you don’t hold the actual power to silence the speaker. In this particular case, what you suggest would work moderately well. I suspect that brining in smart questioners to poke holes in logic would convince people on the fence of the ludicrousness of the claims. But the nature of returns on that strategy is unpleasant. Any speaker equipped with the minimal amount of wits would be able to filibuster the questioning session and obfuscate the topic. This is akin to attempting Saul Alinsky style confrontational tactics with slum lords today. 35 years ago, you could count on a slum lord to act the part for the media and to fall for traps (Schedule a private meeting, but invite the press). today, the naive slumlords have been pushed out. Plan a meeting and they will bring a press liaison. They will show up in a suit and tie and promise the world. The same thing applies here. Only the merest level of sophistication is required to thwart passive protesting methods. People without access to the floor have to resort to asymmetric warfare. I understand the point about not giving people like David Horowitz reason to bloviate on anything but I don’t agree with it. Disruptive acts of protest are important to inserting non-priviledged discourse into a structured event.

But my hesitancy to endorse these students’ actions comes from a deep distrust of expanding that model. Here the non-priviledged discourse was probably Mr.Sorba and not the inclusive message of the students at large. Here the logic of the oppressed was used to silence someone at the margins. So I would go halfway. I would condemn the actions of the students but I’m not prepared to go so far as to condemn the principal.

Is that a purely sarcastic comment or do you not know of the Charlie Brown vs. Lucy (football) line of comics?

Latent sexism may help explain your kinship with Sorba…