UCI Protestors’ agenda not grounds for suspension, expulsion
Published: Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Last Monday, Michael Oren, the first American-born Israeli ambassador to the United States, came to the University of California, Irvine campus. Oren came to share his personal and historical perspective on the U.S.-Israel relationship.
As a campus, UCI, as of late, has been known for being just as politically charged as its northern neighbor UC Berkley. This is why I was not as surprised as many of the audience members were when Oren’s speech was repeatedly interrupted by students in protest. There were eleven of them in all.
Video of Oren’s lecture at UCI can be found easily online, as the incident has gone viral. Online forums and comments regarding the incident are accompanied with intense debate. Discussion of the promotion of bigotry by a university, issues of freedom of speech, as well as the academic future of the students, who were arrested for protesting are discussed in these forums.
According to Cathy Lawhon, UCI’s director of media relations, the student protesters, arrested by campus police for disrupting the speech at UCI, could face a host of academic repercussions from simple warnings to suspensions to all-out expulsions.
I long for the days of peaceful discourse, but it would be a shame for these students to be expelled from thier