Protest is speech: Eich, Hirsi Ali, Sterling, Rice and Obama

Recently, there has been a rash of misunderstanding of what "free speech" means and a failure to understand that protest is speech. The two latest iterations—the Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling affair and the protests at Rutgers University against the honoring of Condoleeza Rice (Rice withdrew)—have been met with varying degrees of condemnation. Of course, very few people are rushing to the defense of Donald Sterling's "free speech" rights while the conservative media (and assorted others as we shall see below) has condemned the Rutgers protests as censorship.

Consider this twitter exchange:

Brendan Buck ‏@BrendanBuck  May 3 I'm embarrassed for Rutgers students

Jon Favreau‏@jonfavs @BrendanBuck no fan of Bush policies, but I completely agree

That John Boehner's press spokesman would demonstrate such a fundamental misunderstanding of free speech and that protest is an important part of that is not surprising. That President Obama's former speechwriter demonstrates such a blatant misunderstanding and expresses such contempt for protest is distressing.

This article provides a bit of articulation on what these gentlemen seem to base "their embarrassment" for the Rutgers protesters:

I realize some will take issue with what I say next, but it left me saddened. It is great that you disagree with me. In fact, I welcome it because this is what discourse is about.  [...] Do I have questions and reservations about what occurred during the years Rice was in her positions? I definitely do. But is there something that I think I could learn from her and would it be useful to hear her perspective in a world that is challenging to figure out? Yes, definitely. [. . .] This, of course, speaks to a much larger issue in terms of what academic inquiry and freedom really mean. To some extent we can find concerns and areas of disagreement with everyone. So should we all be silent?

Let's start with some basics. A commencement speech is not "academic inquiry." It is an honor. It is not a dialogue. It is a speech. Indeed, it is a commencement speech, which in the normal course of events, is filled with platitudes about the future and "making your way through life's challenges" and the like. Rice's commencement speech was not going to be some great conversation about how she came to engage in a campaign of deceit of the American people to mislead the nation into a disastrous war. It was not going to be a conversation about how Rice came to support the war crime of torture. If anything, it was a symbol of IGNORING all of these issues by making Rice and her role in the Bush administration non-controversial. Sort of a "See? We're past all that" moment.

It was, in fact, the protests that drove the continuing of that conversation, not Rice's being invited to be honored at the cost of a $35,000 Rutgers speaking fee to Rice. "Academic inquiry" was not going to be the point of Rice's speech. Indeed, if she wants a little inquiry on the subjects, the protesters stated expressly they would welcome her involvement in such an inquiry at Rutgers. Somehow I doubt Rice would participate in such an exercise.

I have more to say on the other side.