Screenshot from Twitter. Pro-Palestinian protesters disrupted an April 9 anti-Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) talk by George Mason University Law Professor Eugene Kontorovich at the University of Chicago Law School, with chants of “Free Palestine!”
Kontorovich was invited to campus by an unidentified student group to talk about anti-BDS laws and the First Amendment; when he began speaking, around five protesters from Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) started chanting, “Free, free Palestine protesting is not a crime.”
https://twitter.com/RubensteinAdam/status/1115670532500934656
A student at the talk, identified as Seth Cohen, told Reason that Kontorovich tried to keep talking, but the protesters’ chanting got louder and drowned out his voice. Kontorovich told the Journal in a phone interview at first he tried to have the students gather in a corner of the room and continue his talk there, but the protesters followed suit and continued to chatn over him. Kontorovich tried to facilitate a dialogue with the protesters, to no avail.
In an email to students, Charles Todd, the dean of Students, said that he asked the protesters to stop chanting but they ignored his request, prompting police to escort the protesters out of the room.
“This chanting did violate the University’s policies,” Todd wrote. “It is the right of any speaker invited to our campus to be heard for all who choose to be present to hear the speaker. Moreover, it is the right of members of the audience to ask tough questions of those speakers. The heckler’s veto is contrary to our principles. Protests that prevent a speaker from being heard limit the freedoms of other students to listen, engage, and learn.”
Todd added that it would have been fine for the protesters to turn their back on Kontorovich or hold signs, or even continue their chanting outside the corridor where the talk was taking place.
Kontorovich tweeted, “How is an effective persuasion to shout over speakers with slogans unrelated to their topic? Maybe I am missing a trick, but it seems they made the anti-BDS point far more eloquently than I could.”
How is an effective persuasion to shout over speakers with slogans unrelated to their topic? Maybe I am missing a trick, but it seems they made the anti-BDS point far more eloquently than I could. https://t.co/tYZspnQ8YG
— Eugene Kontorovich (@EVKontorovich) April 9, 2019
More power to you, man. By trying to keep students who come to my talk @UChicagoLaw from hearing me, you showed what I could only assert – that BDS is not about persuasion, it is about coercion & intimidation. Doesn’t work on me though. pic.twitter.com/aFpAVuOOPb
— Eugene Kontorovich (@EVKontorovich) April 9, 2019
Kontorovich said that while the disruption was “ridiculous and annoying,” he didn’t want people to get “too upset” about it.
“The goal of these demonstrators isn’t to convince anyone of the justice of their cause because they’re acting like jerks and nobody’s going to be convinced,” Kontorovich said. “It’s rather to create an atmosphere of toxicity around Israel-related issues so that speakers are just not interested in coming.”
He added that the disruption “isn’t going to stop me” from speaking.
More news and opinions than at a Shabbat dinner, right in your inbox.