On Feb. 7, the Daily published an op-ed titled “Perverting protest into profit,” written by Ryan Rizvi. Rizvi argues that Tufts’ “punitive” disciplinary structure limits critical thinking and allows Tufts to control the student body. His argument for challenging authority is sound. However, the argument that it is okay to disobey laws set by shared moral standards not only has no validity but increasingly sows division and conflict. The op-ed sympathizes with kindergarten students who “are put in the timeout corner, only to return when they are embarrassed enough to have learned their lesson.” What would your average kindergarten class be like if there were no rules and no timeouts?
The Fifth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution states that “No person shall … be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” The Fifth Amendment provides the statute that when laws are set, everybody is held accountable under the law by due process. This does not necessarily mean a punitive system in which “children will live consistently within the rules,” or a capitalist dystopia where “control is positively correlated with profit.” Rather, stemming from the ideas of John Locke, it is the sign of a moral community in which there are mutually respected norms.
In the philosophy of Locke, governments are elected by the people in order to provide order to society. The government cannot encroach on certain protected rights — called natural rights — of the people and can be replaced if it does. The point here is that a given government represents the collective standards of the people, and its job is to protect them through a universal application of the law. This is a key principle of a functioning liberal democracy. Law is the summation of our moral code, and its legitimacy is rooted within us, the people — not an autocrat who seeks total thought dominion. But how do we know what is actually right and wrong, and thus, what does and does not deserve punishment? The answer regarding the question of protest in American society lies in the First Amendment of the Constitution.
The First Amendment provides the basis for free speech in America. What exactly free speech constitutes, however, has been questioned in various Supreme Court cases. Tinker v. Des Moines ruled that students were allowed to wear armbands in school protesting the Vietnam War. In Texas v. Johnson, the court ruled that burning the American flag was a form of free speech. Former Justice Louis. D. Brandeis famously said, “No danger flowing from speech can be deemed clear and present, unless the incidence of the evil apprehended is so imminent that it may befall before there is opportunity for full discussion.”
Thus, the protesters on our campus that the op-ed mentions are protected under the First Amendment for their political message, and no matter how provocative it is, only a clear and present danger to security would constitutionally limit it. The catch, however, is found in the Time, Place and Manner Restrictions, which are restrictions on the First Amendment interpreted through the Supreme Court. In Cox v. New Hampshire, the court unanimously ruled that the government “can place reasonable time, place, and manner restrictions on speech for the public safety.” Time, Place and Manner Restrictions include limiting the noise level of speech, capping the number of protesters in a given space and prohibiting early morning or late evening protests. These restrictions are content-neutral and must not be related to the content of the given speech. Additionally, the regulation must be narrowly tailored to place as few restrictions as possible on people’s freedoms. The speaker must also have alternate channels of communication. If there is a compelling public interest preventing protest in a specific area, the law would be narrowly tailored to achieve this interest, but would still allow for the protester to communicate their message in other settings, thus not restricting free speech.
The op-ed claims that “our educational institutions sacrifice our rights, like that to protest, for their self-interest as a business,” but this is false. The Tufts Code of Conduct allows for freedom of speech, restricted by disruption or obstruction of community activity, unauthorized access, disorderly conduct, property damage and vandalism. These time, place and manner restrictions are not restricting the message itself so as to stunt critical thinking and “profit” off of suppression in some shadowy way. Rather, they are put in place to prevent students from forming encampments, raiding buildings, harassing other students and disturbing students who could be taking an exam. There are plenty of ways for the message of the protest to be communicated lawfully, but when these laws are broken, no one should be above the law.
Furthermore, it is not the Tufts administration that stunts critical thinking but the recent protesters themselves. On our current campus, we often fail to have critical discussions between opposing sides — many times defaulting to echo chamber-fueled power struggles. The recent protesters on our campus are seemingly not interested in discussion or discourse. Jonathan Sacks, in “Morality,” explains, “It is not necessary to delegitimize, call out, or cancel your opponents. It is better, simply, to persuade them.” My hope is that we can move on from a system that is zero-sum to a system focused on obtaining truth above all else. In the words of Sacks, “The choice of freedom brings the defeat of victimhood and the redemptive birth of hope.” Recently, there has seemingly been an increasing tendency to use the crutch of the “oppressed vs. oppressor” framework which is Marxist in nature. Rather than revolution, I ask if we can recognize that we are not profit-maximizing machines but instead individuals who have thoughts, feelings and rational choice. Only then can we come together. This concept is best found in religion, which the op-ed claims is a structure of controlled obedience. Here, the op-ed echoes Karl Marx’s words that religion is “the opium of the people.”
The process of healing starts with respect for the rule of law — the incarnation of shared moral standards. The process of war starts with rejecting these standards and cleaving into societal groups that simultaneously claim to be right. The fact that protesters argue for immunity under the rule of law is paradoxical. American essayist Henry David Thoreau spent a night in jail for not paying taxes in protest of the Mexican-American War. Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote his famous essay, “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” while incarcerated. These men were willing to risk their livelihood for what they believed was injustice. What does it say that these protesters grumble when the rule of law is applied? King said, “An individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for the law.” The reluctance of contemporary college protesters to accept a penalty for their actions brings us to two possible conclusions: Either they do not respect the law, or they do not fully believe that the law they are breaking is unjust in relation to their cause.
