Hang on a minute there. Are you telling me that if a university bars from campus someone who threatens to shoot up the place or to set bombs or to poison the drinking water in the administration building, the university wouldn't be justified in barring that person from campus?
They would be justified here.
Why?
What if someone stands on the steps of the student union and shouts that women are whores and shouldn't be allowed to attend classes but should be kept home learning women things like cooking and child-rearing?
I'm ok with this as long as it is in a designated area.
Why a designated area? Why not anywhere on campus? If you are limiting their rights to say what they want where they want when they want, aren't you limiting their rights to free speech?
What if students enter a classroom where the lecture of the day is gay rights? Women's rights? The civil right's movement? Are they still to be allowed to exercise their free speech rights in the middle of class? Even if it disrupts the class being taught?
On one hand you have a point: everyone has a right to express their opinions without fear of arrest or government interference. And sure, unpopular opinions will get shouted down. For the most part, bombastic statements are taken as just that: all hot air, sound and fury signifying nothing.
But the circumstances matter.
A group of 37 Klansmen, dressed in full Klan dress, march through the streets of any black neighborhood in a major city waving signs full of racist shit, shouting horrifically racist slogans. People may be disgusted, revolted and extremely angered but they are not very likely to be threatened (let's ignore Ferguson for a moment). The Klansmen are probably in more danger and likely would require a police escort to ensure their safety. It is clear that they have little real power in that situation and are not a true threat. Their words are so much sound and fury. And indeed, this has been determined to be a legal exercise of their free speech, however hateful.
Now, those same 37 Klansmen, dressed the same way, with the same signs, the same slogans march onto the campus of a university which is 97% white but which has recently installed its first black president as well as has recently begun a campus exchange with a traditionally black university so that there are 40 or so black students who have just enrolled as part of that exchange. In this case, the actions of the Klansmen are much more intimidating, and designed to instill fear. In other words, to make the environment of the university unwelcoming and even hostile to the new president and new students who are the targets of the hate speech. This becomes something a bit different.
That same group of Klansmen, up to their same antics, marches into a small town with a small but significant black community and gathers to shout and demonstrate outside the newly established Mt. Sinai Baptist Church, membership largely black which is holding its first annual dinner honoring senior citizens, and featuring entertainment provided by the children's choir. The intent to intimidate is much more clear here.
Are all allowed? The speech is equally hateful in each case but in the first, it is not credibly threatening and cannot credibly be said to be creating fear or intimidation. In the second and third cases, the intent to create fear and intimidate, in fact to demonstrate how unwelcome blacks are is very clear. The vileness of the speech is not what is unprotected. It is the intent to intimidate and to stop others from exercising their rights that makes the Klan actions perhaps illegal.
The first nationally syndicated stepping contest, S.T.O.M.P., aired in 1992 was created by Frank Mercardo Valdes, produced by the World African Network and Vic Bulluck and choreographed by Vernon Jackson and Jimmy Hamilton of Alpha phi Alpha fraternity.
