Moshe Halbertal |
In a replay of an unacceptable scenario we’ve seen far too many times, Moshe Halbertal, a professor at NYU Law School who teaches Jewish thought and philosophy at Hebrew University, attempted to give a talk on asymmetrical warfare at the University of Minnesota last week, only to find himself repeatedly interrupted and shouted down by anti-Israel protesters endorsed by the thuggish Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP). Three of the protesters were arrested and, predictably, organizers are now claiming that their free speech rights were impeded. Writing for the Volokh Conspiracy at the Washington Post, University of Minnesota Law School professor and attendee Dale Carpenter concludes that:
[B]eyond punishing the disruption of a public lecture, a university cannot accept any moral legitimacy in such an act or equivocate in denouncing it. It is fundamentally illiberal and destructive to the core values of an educational institution. And ironically, those who espouse unpopular and minority causes would be most vulnerable in a world where mobs feel authorized on principle to decide who may speak.
