The Dying Art of Disagreement

Speakers are compensated handsomely for their engagements, no? I don't see anything wrong with students refusing to see their tuition bankroll the likes of Kissinger or Rice--people with blood on their hands.

The article is talking about something more than protest.

Most of the hatred was focused on Dr. Murray, but when I took his right arm to shield him and to make sure we stayed together, the crowd turned on me. Someone pulled my hair, while others were shoving me. I feared for my life. Once we got into the car, protesters climbed on it, hitting the windows and rocking the vehicle whenever we stopped to avoid harming them. I am still wearing a neck brace, and spent a week in a dark room to recover from a concussion caused by the whiplash.

That's basically mob violence. Respectful protest and disagreement is to hear someone out, not intimidate and violently stop them from speaking. It's just an odd mindset. You're at college, so presumably you are there to be educated, to experience different points of view, to learn.

edit: Asked if modern media or some other factor was the biggest cause of this, saying this so the reply makes sense.

Listen to your enemies, they have more to teach you than your allies.

"It has always been the prerogative of children and half-wits to point out that the emperor has no clothes. But the half-wit remains a half-wit, and the emperor remains an emperor." -Neil Gaiman

This has nothing to do with "students refusing to see" certain people.

It would be absolutely lovely, if it were solely that.

What this has to do with is with students preventing other students from engaging with certain speakers.

This is about insane protestors assaulting people, blocking entrances to venues, disrupting the actual events, and people trying to convince public universities to literally break the law by engaging in viewpoint discrimination.

The examples that the NYT used were situations where people were attacked, and literally sent to the hospital. IE, the 50 year old democrat teacher from middlebury who had to go to the hospital, because some protesters assaulted her for protecting a speaker as they were trying to escape a mob of people who surrounded them, and wouldn't let them leave.

Please, please, please lets all go back in time to when if you didn't like a speaker then you just didn't attend the speech.

I'm perfectly willing to engage in respectful dialogue over a simple difference in opinion. Less willing to financially compensate murderers in the name of liberal civility.