Not good enough. That’s our take on President Christina Paxon’s response to the way protestors at Brown University prevented Police Commissioner Ray Kelly from giving a scheduled speech Tuesday.
Clearly, Paxson isn’t excusing what happened. In a statement she said “the conduct of disruptive members of the audience is indefensible and an affront both to civil democratic society and to the university’s core values of dialogue and the free exchange of views.” And she called for a meeting Wednesday night at Brown.
At the Minding the Campus Web site, John Leo has an idea. Instead of simply condemning a protest that in fact succeeded in its stated goal of squelching speech, Paxon should “invite Kelly back and provide enough campus police to prevent the yahoos from shutting him down again.”
We’d go further. In addition to bringing Kelly back to campus, how about identifying the students responsible and requiring them to do 20 hours of community service with, say, “Grandmothers LOV.” This is a remarkable alliance of New York city cops and neighborhood grandmothers aimed at combating gun violence.
Think of it as the NYPD version of what our campuses call “a teaching moment.”