Just before his speech was canceled by the relentless interruptions of protesters, New York City Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said, “I thought this was the academy … where we’re supposed to have free speech.” So did I. But at Brown’s most recent demonstration of its inability to foster healthy intellectual discourse, this was not the case.
In fact, that one line about free speech is just about the only sentence I was able to hear Kelly utter at his lecture on Tuesday before calls of protest and personal attacks filled List Art Center 120. I had expected some protests and initially flocked to event because I knew I was guaranteed to see some genuine Brown student activism. I thought this would be a great platform on which I could write a compelling column contesting racial politics and the constitutional legality of the controversial stop-and-frisk policy. Unfortunately, my initial academic interest in the event was quickly overshadowed by a much less compelling movement of solidarity among certain students in the Brown community.
Prior to my arrival outside of List, I was unaware a formal petition had actually been circulated through parts of the student body with the intention of completely cancelling the lecture. Yes, I had visited the Facebook event page, “Ray Kelly Protest Rally,” and read it as an organizing point for protest, but I would not have thought the organizers’ mission to be to destroy any discussion of such a relevant and provocative topic as “Proactive Policing.” I was in for a surprise.
I headed over to College Street at around 3:30 p.m., a half hour before the lecture was to start. I could hear chants as I walked across the Quiet Green: “Racist, sexist, anti-gay / How many kids did you kill today? / Islamophobic, thanks to Ray: / NYPD go away!” I had never heard of Ray Kelly killing any kids — it sounded like massive social recalcitrance funneled into a cute chant to pin on a visiting lecturer.
I asked the Providence Police and Brown Department of Public Safety officers present at the event how they felt having fellow officers insulted and ridiculed for doing their jobs. They all declined to comment. It seems race is the most sensitive of topics — everyone fears the slightest chance of being labeled on the wrong side. And so, with obnoxiousness dominating insecurity, the marching parade headed inside.
Most of what happened next has been well-documented in news sources from The Herald to the Wall Street Journal. Kelly’s lecture was repeatedly interrupted by jeers and insults to the point of degeneration in which racial accusations affronted every attempt at intellectual discourse, and so the lecture was canceled. So much for my column on racial politics and constitutionality. I was disappointed, to say the least.
But my biggest disappointment, and the real tragedy of this event, was the explicit unwillingness of the protesters to allow for an academic discussion of such an important and relevant topic. Their quick justification for the complete repudiation of the lecture is that the policy Kelly represents has made minorities undeserved victims, which is certainly true to an extent. But let us not forget these policies have prevented minorities from becoming more serious victims of assault, rape and homicide. In fact, crime in New York City has declined more than 30 percent in the past decade, partially due to these policies. Therefore, it is unfair and childish to simply discount a valuable opportunity to learn about an effective but imperfect system as a promulgation of white supremacy.
And so the Brown community is left with a wasted opportunity. Those who were interested in learning the details of proactive policing learned nothing. And those who stood against Kelly wasted a valuable opportunity to hear him untainted by any sort of media representation, an opportunity to form a genuine and individual opinion of his policies and their implications.
Sadly, this event makes the case that Brown responds to perceived violence with violence, even when progress is being made through formal discourse — the stop-and-frisk policy was ruled unconstitutional in August. Thus, Brown can no longer choose to frame itself as an “open-minded” institution, as events like these undermine the University’s credibility to the point where future lecturers will be reluctant to visit campus.
I can only hope and urge members of the Brown community to recall that progress is not achieved through violent expression and silencing of others, but through a constant drive for perspective and understanding. That is what makes us confident in our beliefs and in ourselves.
J.P. Hare ’14 is concentrating in history.
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