The Volokh Conspiracy
Mostly law professors | Sometimes contrarian | Often libertarian | Always independent
Protesters Disrupt Stanford Class
Stanford reports:
On Tuesday afternoon, Feb. 25, several individuals disrupted the Democracy and Disagreement course in Cemex Auditorium to protest a guest speaker, former Secretary of the Treasury Larry Summers, who was there to debate with the economist Emmanuel Saez on the idea of a wealth tax.
The protestors were not Stanford students.
This behavior violates university policy and will not be tolerated. The Department of Public Safety collected information from the disruptors and is referring the information to the Santa Clara County District Attorney's Office. We are taking steps to ban these individuals from our campus, which is private property. We extend the university's apologies both to the speakers and to the students who were in attendance.
The expression of divergent views is welcome and expected in our community, and our policies provide ample opportunities for protest. But the classroom is at the center of the university's educational mission. Disruption in the classroom setting is a fundamental disruption of the university's operations and of the enrolled students' opportunity to learn. Indeed, the Stanford students in the class on Tuesday afternoon vocally demanded that the demonstration stop so that the students could hear the speakers. The Democracy and Disagreement class has successfully hosted eighteen sessions of respectful debate on controversial topics in the last year, and we are encouraged by the fact that a few hundred audience members were present to actually hear the debate and promote the values of civil discourse.
For more on the Democracy and Disagreement course, which I think is generally excellent and admirably balanced, see here. Of course, no class should be disrupted, even if it isn't excellent or balanced, but it's particularly regrettable when a class such as this is targeted.
You can see more coverage of the disruption at the Stanford Review (Dylan Rem).
