Columbia Law Professor: Letting a Right-Wing Activist Speak Is 'An Act of Violence'

I think that having a Columbia Law Professor say such things is an act of violence

Kayum Ahmed, an adjunct faculty member at Columbia's Law School, helped students prevent a controversial right-wing speaker from giving a talk (via Skype) on campus. He also preemptively filed a discrimination complaint because the speech in question "constitutes an act of violence" and "is a form of harassment and discrimination."

Ahmed claimed in the Columbia Daily Spectator that he is under investigation for his role in disrupting the College Republicans' event on October 10, which involved a presentation by Tommy Robinson. Robinson is a far-right European anti-Islamic activist who is legally barred from entering the U.S., which is why he was scheduled to speak via Skype.

The speech didn't happen: Protesters shouted him down, making it impossible for the Columbia audience to hear him, according to Campus Reform's Toni Airaksinen. Ahmed has defended his actions on the grounds that allowing someone like Robinson to speak is dangerous, and that hate speech does not deserve robust First Amendment protection:

Robinson is indeed a hateful and loathsome person. If I were a member of the College Republicans, I would have implored my friends not to give him a platform. I support students and professors who protested both the decision to invite Robinson, and Robinson himself.

But words are not violence, and the hatefulness of Robinson's perspective is not grounds for cancelling his speech or shouting him down. Ahmed's argument is paternalistic: He doesn't trust students to "choose the most well-reasoned argument" when presented with a hateful perspective, and so he wants to strip them of their right to listen. This is illiberal thinking, and a betrayal of the values for which Columbia stands, and a concerning position for a member of the law faculty to take.

SOURCE