Constitutional Law,
Letters
Jun. 10, 2014
The First Amendment applies to students, too
Students have every right to exercise their First Amendment by peacefully protesting against their colleges bestowing valuable honors on people they believed do not deserve such accolades.
Stephen F. Rohde
Email: rohdevictr@aol.com
Stephen is a retired civil liberties lawyer and contributor to the Los Angeles Review of Books, is author of American Words for Freedom and Freedom of Assembly.
I certainly admire Julie Kessler as a free speech advocate and always enjoy her columns. But I respectfully disagree with her when it comes to her attack on students who recently protested against certain graduation speakers. ["The speech that never was," June 4].
Students at Rutgers, Smith and Haverford had every right to exercise their First Amendment rights to write letters and sign petitions peacefully protesting against their colleges bestowing valuable honors and extravagant fees ($35,000 in the case of Condoleezza Rice!) on people they believed do not deserve such accolades. Rice's foreign policy led to the debacle of two wars and unspeakable torture and she has many other public platforms to justify her war crimes and for students and others to hear her views. The students had every right to urge Rutgers not to honor her and reward her with scarce funds better spent on scholarships and other academic needs. The students did not engage in any act of "censorship." The universities and the speakers could take or leave the students' views. The final decision for these speakers to withdraw was entirely their own. Consequently, instead of condemning them, we should be celebrating these conscientious students for having the courage of their convictions to speak out on these important and visible occasions.Submit your own column for publication to Diana Bosetti
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