Columbia students rush anti-immigration speaker

By Adam Goldman
The Associated Press

New York mayor Michael Bloomberg said Friday it was an “outrage” that Columbia University students stormed a campus stage while the anti-immigration founder of the Minuteman Project was speaking, and he urged the school’s president to prevent such incidents in the future.

“Freedom of speech is freedom of speech and I think it’s an outrage that somebody that was invited didn’t get a chance to speak,” the mayor said on his weekly radio show. “I don’t care whether you’re from the hard left, the hard right... if you get invited, whoever invites you should have the courtesy to let you speak and provide the protection so that you can do it.”

The mayor’s remarks came in the wake of Wednesday’s incident in which Jim Gilchrist had to scrub his talk after students from the Chicano Caucus climbed on stage with banners denouncing the California-based project. The event was organized by the school’s College Republicans.

A videotape of the fracas shows students shouting and tussling with Minuteman supporters, but there didn’t appear to be any violence.

“We didn’t touch anyone,” Karina Garcia, a senior and member of the university’s Chicano Caucus,” told the Daily News. “When they brought this speaker, this was an attack on our community and our families. We simply expressed our right to freedom of speech.”

But Bloomberg said the students were out of line.

“Universities are supposed to be where you can express your views no matter how distasteful they may be to somebody,” he said. “You either believe in free speech or you don’t.”

Bloomberg said Columbia President Lee C. Bollinger needs to ensure that people can come to his campus and speak freely. “Bollinger’s just got to get his hands around this,” the mayor said.

In a statement released Friday, Bollinger called the disruption unacceptable and “one of the most serious breaches of academic faith that can occur in a university such as ours.”

Bollinger said the university was investigating the incident and that students would be held accountable. The university was also reviewing event management practices to ensure a safe environment for speakers.

“This is not complicated: Students and faculty have rights to invite speakers to the campus,”

Bollinger said. “Others have rights to hear them. Those who wish to protest have rights to do so.

No one, however, shall have the right or the power to use the cover of protest to silence speakers.

This is a sacrosanct and inviolable principle.”

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