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Comment by olliej | Hacker News Reader

Hmmm, if a group of white supremacists booed someone talking about their experience of racism, then got up and walked out, what would the administration’s response been?

If that group then sent an email saying that they left because they did not feel comfortable and were subjected to hostility by the surrounding audience, would that be given a moment of respect?

What if that organisation was giving large amounts of funding to Cornell, would that have impacted the response?

These seem like reasonable question, variations of which come up every time students of some country committing crimes against humanity come out in support of said crimes. The response is always silence.

I don’t really expect anything different this time.

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Indeed. Similar things have occurred in universities here in Australia. And as far as I know, universities bend over backwards because a large amount of their money comes in from international students. A lot of which happen to be Chinese.

Legally speaking, the University admin cannot do anything to Chinese students who boo and walk out, and also cannot do anything to white supremacists who boo and walk out.

In the US, Students have First Amendment rights to express themselves. The critical point here is that by walking out they did not prevent any speakers from exercising their own First Amendment rights.

It does not mean we have to respect them for that or be polite about it. That's our First Amendment right.

That's not how the First Amendment works. Cornell University is a private organization and it can choose not to do business with people if it wants to, provided that it's not breaking other laws by doing so. Students get suspended or expelled for speech all the time. (I would guess public universities can too - the First Amendment says "Congress shall make no law..." - not sure where its boundaries are drawn though.)

Private universities can be subject to free speech rules: states could mandate them, and if they take federal grants or otherwise do business with the federal government they could be subject to additional rules. See https://campusfreespeechguide.pen.org/the-law/the-basics/

A public university is restricted by the first amendment. That doesn't mean they can never have speech limitations, but political speech is very heavily protected.

Cornell is a private university, but it does receive significant government money and some of it's underling colleges are state funded. If it was acting in a way as to obviously disrespect the first amendment, that funding could be revoked.

Cornell isn’t a fully private university. I really doubt it can do any more censorship than a fully public university.

> Although it's an Ivy League university, chartered as a private institution, it includes undergraduate colleges and schools that receive some funding from New York State. They are sometimes called state contract colleges. The state subsidy results in lower tuition for students who have New York State residency and are enrolled in these colleges or schools

https://cornelladmissions.happyfox.com/kb/article/217-is-cor...

That's not really correct. The First Amendment doesn't necessarily prevent private schools such as Cornell from disciplining students for legal speech. This is one area where public universities are generally superior.

https://campusfreespeechguide.pen.org/the-law/the-basics/

There may be state laws that bind the private schools like in California.

Stridently confident and 100% wrong.

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