For the people who are prohibiting the exercise of free speech? why aren t you mad at them? you seem to be blaming the people who dared to have ideas you don t agree with. a i am of course mad at people who are shutting down speech forcibly. tucker: what should happen to them? should they be expelled? i think that i am not really in it s not my interest in adjudicating punishment to these people. tucker: why not? because it s not my role. i don t do that. i m not a disciplinarian. tucker: what you mean it s not your role? you just wrote a piece making apologies for people who shutdown free speech, trying to create an intellectual framework to justify fascism. now you are saying yousm can t comment on that? it s a really simple question. if a student prevents a speaker from speaking, what should happen to the student? it s a question besides the point of the argument, which is that colleges should be able to have standards for the speakers that they bring.th tucker:
Or dis- invitation attempts. if you look at that, you will see it is not always from the left that the dis-invitation or no platform happens. i want to correct that. tucker: can you name a single example where a speaker has been physically prevented from speaking by conservative students? i know basically that barack obama and alice walker have been denied or at least tucker: no, they were not stopped from speaking. nobody put their bodyguards in the hospital. nobody threw rocks against the building or pounded on the windows. conservative students have not, that i am aware of, have stopped any speakers. yet, you see it on the left. your piece doesn t say anything about that. i wonder why? i actually am pretty explicit about my opposition to
Campuses. sure. i am personally very speech permissive, i would say i am very pro-speech, almost absolutist on speech. my view is basically that universities, institutions of higher education, should be able to make value judgments abouton quality of speaker, not ideological tests. not about whether the speaker if not to mob rule or popularity contest, but judgments about the quality of the speaker s suitability for a speech at an institution of higher education. tucker: free speech, it has been defined pretty precisely by the supreme court, is not curtailed by other people s viewsou of it. in other words, you have an absolute right to say what you think, to deliver your political opinions in public. the truth is, you know if colleges abridge that freedom on
The basis of political views why would you defend that? i wouldn t, in fact, that is not the argument.t the argument is not that there should be a test based on the political views of the speaker. the argument is that there should be a consideration of the relative quality of the speaker and the suitability of the speaker for the educational mission of an institution of higher education. tucker: oh, okay, so, those are so subjective, those terms, that they allow a college to stop speech they disagree with, which is of course exactly what happens. i can t think of an occasion in the life of colby college, for example, when conservative students have stopped a liberal speaker. it is always the other way around. so, what are the criteria? why is ann coulter, for example, who is raising big public policy issues, immigration, why is she not suitable?ot well, a couple points on this. one, if you look at, a wonderful service by the foundation for individual rights, provides a database
Joy behar, when they are saying, get over yourselves, berkeley,ge we have a first amendment, people have fought and died for the right to free speech. tucker: you can see the rest of the interview on sean s show tonight at 10:00. despite sabotaging the coulter speech by forcibly changing the date and refusing to supply facilities, berkeley claims its: commitment to free speech remains absolute. then, why not defend ann coulter s right to exercise it? aaron hanlon is a professor at colby college and justte wrote a piece for the new republic, saying that colleges have a right to make what he calls a value judgment by blocking speakers they disagree with. professor hanlon joins us tonight. professor, thanks for coming on. thanks very much for having me, tucker.s, tucker: pardon my surprise that a liberal arts professor would be squelching free speech. i read your piece in the new republic. outline your justification for not allowing people to disagree with speakers on college