“I think everybody is entitled to free speech, but this was not that,” Lawhon said. “In the end, they were preventing him [Oren] from exercising his right to free speech.”
Three of the students were from UC Riverside, and the remainder were from UCI, according to the list provided by the university.
As soon as Oren was scheduled to speak about relations between Israel and the U.S., there was no doubt that a protest was going to ensue.
The university’s Muslim Student Union even sent out a statement by e-mail, saying that it condemned and opposed Oren’s presence, who was brought to the university by the Law School and political science department.
“We resent that the Law School and the political science department on our campus have agreed to co-sponsor a public figure who represents a state that continues to break international and humanitarian law and is condemned by more UN Human Rights Council resolutions than all other countries in the world combined,” the statement said.
Condemnation and opposition is one thing; not letting Oren speak was another.
“Free speech is about allowing people to say what’s on their minds,” said Rabbi Richard Steinberg of Shir Ha-ma’alot in Irvine. “It’s not about screaming and yelling. I’d like there to be peace over there. I’d like Palestine to be a state and Israel to be free and safe. I’d like for the Palestinians to be safe. But this sort of lack of discourse isn’t going to help. If you’re going to protest, protest in a respectful way.”
At the Counsel on American-Islamic Relations in Los Angeles, Munira Syeda, a spokeswoman for the organization, cautioned that violence in the Middle East shouldn’t “spill over” into the United States.
“We encourage both sides to have a discourse about the conflict,” she said. “Each side has a right to share their concerns with the rest of the public.”
“These students used their 1st Amendment right and engaged in protesting a foreign government’s human rights violations — violations that Israel is well-known for around the globe,” Syeda said later in an e-mail. “We should remember our own nation’s rich history of supporting protests against the unequal treatment of minorities — that’s what the civil rights movement was and is all about.”
