Individuals and groups who object to a controversial speaker should understand the limits of protest in a community committed to the principles of free speech. Let us therefore be clear about those limits.

(1) It is desirable that individuals and groups register in a wide-open and robust fashion their opposition to the views of a speaker with whom they disagree or whom they find offensive. When such a speaker has been invited to the campus by one group, other groups may seek to dissuade the inviters from proceeding. But it is a punishable offense against the principles of the University, for the objectors to coerce others physically or to threaten violence.

(2) The permissible registration of opposition includes all forms of peaceful speech, such as letters to newspaper editors, peaceful assembly, and counter-speeches in appropriate locations. Furthermore, picketing is permissible outside of a building so long as it is peaceful and does not interfere with entrance to or exit from the building or with pedestrian or vehicular traffic outside of a building. It is important to understand, however, that picketing is more than expression. It is expression joined to action. Accordingly, it is entitled to no protection when its effect is coercive.

(3) There is not right to protest within a university building in such a way that any university activity is disrupted. The administration, however, may wish to permit some symbolic dissent within a building but outside the meeting room, for example, a single picket or a distributor of handbills.

(4) In the room where the invited speaker is to talk, all members of the audience are under an obligation to comply with a general standard of civility. This means that any registration of dissent that materially interferes with the speaker's right to proceed is a punishable offense. Of course a member of the audience may protest in a silent, symbolic fashion, for example, by wearing a black arm band. More active forms of protest may be tolerated such as briefly booing, clapping hands, or heckling. But any disruptive activity must stop when the chair or an appropriate university official requests silence. Failure to quit in response to a reasonable request for order is a punishable offense.

(5) Nor does the content of the speech, even parts deemed defamator or insulting, entitle any member of the audience to engage in disruption. While untruthful and defamatory speech may give rise to civil liability it is neither a justification nor an excuse for disruption, and it may not be considered in any subsequent proceeding against offenders as a mitigating factor. Nor are racial insults or other "fighting words" a valid ground for disruption or physical attack, certainly not from a voluntary audience invited but it no way compelled to be present. Only if speech advocates immediate and serious illegal action, such as burning down a library, and there is danger that the audience will proceed to follow such an exhortation, may it be stopped, and then only by an authorized university official or law enforcement officer.

(6) The banning or obstruction of lawful speech can never be justified on such grounds as that the speech or the speaker is deemed irresponsible, offensive, unscholarly, or untrue.

Above all, every member of the university has an obligation to permit free expression in the university. No member has a right to prevent such expression. Every official of the university, moreover, has a special obligation to foster free expression and to ensure that it is not obstructed.