The incident seemed a repeat of the infamous disruption of Judge Duncan of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit at Stanford Law School three years ago.
On Tuesday night, over 150 protesters gathered outside the event chanting criticisms of the Trump administration, including “No ICE, No KKK, No Fascist U.S.A.” Protests outside of events are generally protected speech. Indeed, such protests are an important element in fostering free speech values on our campuses.
The problem is that protesters also organized to disrupt the event from inside Royce Hall. Students booed Percival throughout his talk and held up profane and disgusting signs. Some had their phones constantly ringing, making it difficult for others to hear Percival. It is, of course, fine to go to the event and ask tough questions or disagree with the speaker. These students were drowning out the speaker with shouts and phones.
The law school was aware of the preparations to disrupt the event. Groups circulated posts, hung posters, and circulated online petitions that said that even allowing the general counsel to speak with students was triggering and “threatening.”
One group called By Any Means Necessary (BAMN), called for mass protests over allowing the views of the DHS to be heard on campus. A flyer declared, “UCLA must not give representatives of ICE and the Trump Administration a base to organize Trump’s campaign of racist ethnic cleansing of the U.S. and the Middle East.”
Another posting called upon students to “Stop the fascist takeover of the American federal government! Stop the Trump police state!” Other flyers portrayed the event with allowing Nazis to speak on campus.
The UCLA Latine Law Students Association said that the event endangered students, insisting that allowing Percival to speak “utterly disregards the safety of our undocumented students and minimizes the great harm and trauma that has been inflicted on our communities over the decades.”
It further maintained that:
“By giving Mr. Percival a platform, The Federalist Society and UCLA Law are legitimizing and normalizing racially discriminatory policies that are actively harming both UCLA students and our broader community.”
It is all-too-familiar rhetoric. Groups claim to be triggered or threatened by opposing views and then use those claims to justify disruption and obstruction of the speaker.
The students were clear that anyone speaking from the Trump Administration would be subject to the same disruption: “UCLA must not give representatives of ICE and the Trump Administration a base to organize Trump’s campaign of racist ethnic cleansing of the U.S. and the Middle East.”
These students find the expression of opposing views to be intolerable. Rather than engage the speaker with a substantive and civil discussion of policies and practices, they believe that spewing profanities, heckling, and drowning out a speaker are the proper way to engage those who hold different viewpoints.
I commend Mr. Percival and the Federalist Society for their willingness to expose themselves to such abuse in an effort to foster a dialogue on these important issues. Students had the opportunity to exchange viewpoints with one of the highest-ranked officials in the DHS. That was what these protesters were intent on stopping with their shouts and cellphone tactics.
What is most notable about the videotape is that the students are clearly shown and identifiable. However, the law school’s statement on the incident did not include a commitment to hold these students accountable. It merely noted that “The law school worked with the Office of Campus and Community Safety in advance to support the event and uphold the university’s commitment to the free exchange of ideas.”
If so, it utterly failed in that commitment. These tactics are expressly prohibited by the university as “so disruptive so as to effectively silence” a speaker. The fact that the speaker continued to try to speak (and was able to do so after a walkout) does not change the fact that these students succeeded in disrupting and effectively silencing the speaker during the event.
The incident is reminiscent of the earlier incident at Northwestern University, where the university condemned but did nothing about students who entered a class and forced it to be canceled over a guest speaker from ICE. It was the lack of any action, not the condemnation, that left the greatest impact on the students.
The same full-throated message was sent at Stanford, where no student was punished, and the university made everyone watch a meaningless video that was openly mocked. One year after the incident, a majority of Stanford students believed shouting down Judge Duncan was warranted.
UCLA has shown little interest in restoring viewpoint diversity on its campus. This is the university that has paid for a series of radical “resident activists” to lecture students. It appears to have made activism a central part of its educational mission.
The same week that the law school event was disrupted, the Undergraduate Students Association Council “condemned” the holding of an event featuring a hostage who survived the Oct. 7 massacre. The group declared the event as “elevating a single narrative” and obscuring “what has been widely identified by human rights advocates as a genocide in Gaza.”
In this context, the law school controversy is hardly surprising. UCLA remains a deeply intolerant environment for many speakers and students.
We will now wait to see whether the University, the Law School and Dean Michael Waterstone are willing to discipline the students who disrupted this event. This type of premeditated, overt misconduct reflects an enabling culture fostered by the faculty.
If UCLA wants more light than heat, it must start enforcing (rather than just mouthing) its commitment to the free expression of viewpoints.