Student Activists Charged with Engaging in Student Activism

When the University of California, Irvine (UCI) last year asked the ambassador of a government widely considered to be guilty of war crimes to deliver a lecture on campus, student activists upset over their tuition money being used to provide him a platform for propaganda staged a protest, shouting phrases like "murder is not free speech," that ultimately prevented the lecture from being delivered.

Had the ambassador been from, say, Sudan, and had he rationalizing the slaughter of civilians in Darfur, the students would likely be heralded as heroes who bravely stood up for their beliefs. But he wasn't: the ambassador, Michael Oren, was from Israel. And so last week Orange County District Attorney Tony Rackauckas announced he was pursuing criminal charges against the 11 UCI students for disrupting the speech – charges that could land them in jail.

In a February 4 statement, Rackauckas justified charging the students with “conspiring and disrupting a lawful assembly” by citing his duty to uphold the Constitution. “Freedom of speech is a precious constitutional right that goes to the heart of our democratic form of government,” he said.

Of course, as anyone vaguely familiar with constitutional law knows – and let's forgive Rackauckas; he's a prosecutor, after all – the First Amendment-recognized right to free speech pertains to state actions. That is, under the Constitution, the government is not permitted to pass laws restricting speech. So, if California had a law barring ridiculous, unconvincing rationalizations for war crimes, for instance, Ambassador Oren might be able to make a good case that his rights were violated.

What the First Amendment doesn't guarantee is the right to not to be disrupted. While one might find the tactic rude and even counterproductive – I, for one, think nothing's more damning than hearing Israeli officials themselves try to justify their mass murder in the Gaza Strip, 2009's Operation Cast Lead having killed more than 1,400 Palestinians – the students who disrupted Oren's speech, who were already disciplined by the university, could make a much better argument that it is their right to free speech that is being violated.

And that's what civil liberties advocates and actual experts on constitutional law think. Speaking to the OC Weekly, the ACLU's Hector Villagra said his organization is “deeply troubled” by the charges filed against the so-called “Irvine 11.”

“We are unaware of any case where a district attorney pressed criminal charges over this type of nonviolent student protest,” Villagra said.

Nader Nasr, a student at the University of California, Los Angeles, tells Change.org he decided to take action when he first heard the district attorney was considering pressing charges, including by launching a petition that's attracted more than 1,000 signatures. UCI has already taken action disciplinary against the students, Nasr notes, and “now we are talking about prosecution, which is absolutely absurd and would set a horrible precedent for student activism.”

“We have had far more severe situations take place where objects have actually been thrown at the speaker or somebody gets on stage and interrupts the speech,” says Nasr. “These students did interrupt the talk multiple times, bu they instantly were removed and in a peaceful manner.”

Indeed, last November, pro-Israel protesters disrupted a meeting of the group Jewish Voice for Peace, “heckling speakers and preventing the meeting from proceeding as planned,” according to Jewish news outlet J. Weekly. One protester even used pepper spray against a member of Jewish Voice for Peace.

No charges have been filed.

Photo Credit: University of California, Irvine