When Middlebury invited Charles Murray to speak, the event was disrupted by student protestors and both Murray and Professor Allison Sanger were assailed on campus. This incident sparked reflection on the campus and beyond. Peter Singer, a philosopher who is no stranger to controversy,  had his talk disrupted by people who disagree with his views. The process of shutting down a speaker by disruption is the heckler’s veto.

Critics have claimed that such disruptions prove the left believes free speech extends only to those they agree with. On the one hand, this does have some merit: some notable disruptions have been aimed at speakers whose views are generally opposed by the left. On the other hand, such disruptions have also been opposed by others on the left. As such, claiming the left opposes free speech they disagree with is no more (or less) accurate than saying the right opposes local control when they disagree with it, such as when local governments want to ban fracking or impose gun control. While speculating about whether “the left” is against free speech is interesting, the focus of this essay in on the ethics of the heckler’s veto.

The extreme version of the heckler’s veto is violence, such as that directed against Murray and Sanger. Richard Spencer, who is regarded by some as a Nazi, was famously punched for his views, igniting a debate about the ethics of punching Nazis. When protests occurred on campuses over Gaza, violence was often used to silence the protestors. This violence included state and university sanctioned police violence. The right, which had been outraged about “the left” silencing speakers was generally on board with this.

The standard version of the heckler’s veto is, as the name indicates, heckling to prevent a speaker from being heard or interfering until they give up. The hallmark of this sort of heckler is that they are not trying to engage and refute the speaker, they are endeavoring to prevent the speaker from being heard.

One approach is to take the standard view that as long as the speaker is not engaged in directly harmful speech (such as slander or calls for violence), they should be free to speak without disruption. A more sophisticated approach is to use a utilitarian method of weighing the harms and benefits of allowing the speaker to exercise the right to free speech. For example, if punching Nazis to silence them sends the message that Nazism will not be tolerated and this reduces the hate crimes committed in the United States, then such punching could be defended as good. For those who see protesting against Israel as bad, they could argued that the good of silencing protestors warrants disrupting protests, perhaps even with violence.

An alternative to the utilitarian approach is to argue that there are some things, such as Nazism and sexism, whose badness entails people should not be permitted to speak in favor of them even if doing so created no meaningful harms. While I do see the appeal in the “there are things we must not allow to be said” approach, there is the challenge of showing that even without any harm being caused, such speech is simply wrong. One obvious approach, which I will not develop here, is that publicly speaking in favor of such things will always cause meaningful harm.

One interesting approach to heckling is to point out that it seems to be a tactic for those who cannot refute the views they oppose; it is the noisy refuge of the logically or rhetorically incompetent. If the views being expressed by the offending speaker are wrong, then they should be refutable by argumentation. If all someone can do is yell and disrupt, they should remain silent in favor of someone who can refute the speaker. For example, those who disagreed with Murray could have made their points by arguing against him.

A practical reply is that the audience might not be given the opportunity to engage in a possibly lengthy refutation of the speaker. As such, they must engage in heckling to prevent the speaker from speaking. A reasonable counter to this is that while a person might not have the chance to engage at the actual event, they have an opportunity at refutation via other venues, such as social media.

Another reply to this is that allowing the speaker to speak on a campus lends legitimacy and normalizes the speaker’s views, even if the views are not explicitly endorsed. As such, if a speaker cannot be prevented from being invited, then they must be silenced by disruption to prevent their views from gaining a platform.

While this does have appeal and schools should consider the educational merit of speakers, having a person speak on campus does not entail that the school endorses the views and does not automatically make them legitimate. To use the obvious analogy, using the Communist Manifesto and Mein Kampf in a political science class does not endorse or legitimize these works. Likewise, inviting someone with right wing views or who is critical of Israel to a debate does not entail that the school endorses these views or make them automatically legitimate. Just as reading books containing ideas one might not agree with (or even hate) is part of education, so too is listening to speakers expressing such ideas. As such, heckling speakers to silence them would be on par with censoring books to keep people from reading them or movies to keep people from seeing them. Critics of the right are, no doubt, thinking that is exactly what the right does, and this exposes the hypocrisy of their claims that they are protecting freedom from the left.

The educational value argument can be countered by making use of  one of Plato’s arguments for censorship in the Republic. Plato argued that exposure to certain types of art would corrupt people and make them worse. For example, someone who was exposed to violent works of art could become corrupted into becoming violent. Plato’s solution was to ban such art.

In the case of speakers, it could be argued that they must be silenced by heckling because their speeches would corrupt members of the audience. For example, one might claim that listening to Murray talk about his work would corrupt audience members with racism and poor methodology. As another example, one might argue that allowing people to protest Israel’s actions would corrupt the audience This argument assumes, as does Plato’s, that most people lack the ability to defend themselves from such corrupting power. Since the hecklers think the speaker is wrong, they presumably think that most people are either incapable of discerning right from wrong or are just awaiting the right trigger to cause them to embrace evil. On this view, the hecklers would be heroes: those strong enough to resist the siren song of evil and loud enough to drown it out. For those who agree with Plato, Aristotle or Stanley Milgram, this argument should be appealing: most people are easily swayed towards misdeeds and few are influenced by either arguments or fine ideals. Those who dislike Trump and attribute his election in part to defects in voters would also find this approach appealing. And, of course, no discussion of this sort would be complete without a mandatory reference to Hitler and his ability to win over the people.

But, of course, no discussion of this sort would be complete without noting how heckling is like any other tool in that it can be used by the good and the evil alike. Naturally, the people using it will usually think they are on the side of good and their foes evil. Their foes are likely to think the opposite. Since sorting out what is good and bad requires consideration and discussion, silencing people would interfere with sorting these things out. As such, I am opposed to heckling, even if I disagree strongly with the target. That said, one might be tempted by Plato’s argument that the ears of the many must be protected from corrupting words and that it is up to the philosophers to decide which words are corrupting and which are wholesome.