Thank you for the update from UC Irvine.

As it happens, today is the anniversary of a landmark Supreme Court ruling, in which some speech was found NOT to be protected. The 1942 Chaplinsky versus New Hampshire decision covered "fighting words", or words meant to "inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of peace."

I would be disgusted if I heard a speaker say the things you mentioned. On the other hand, I don't know how to craft a law that stops the bad speech and lets the good speech through.

My own views about hate speech have been changing. I now lean toward defending hate speech and using it as an opportunity for a reasoned response.

Let me give two examples.

1. A family in UCSC's Family Student Housing complex allegedly displayed an anti-gay window sign. The response from the local queer community (and straight allies) was swift. By writing articles, holding discussions, and having meetings, we were able to educate many people.

2. Local 23 of the United Transportation Union, which represents transit drivers in Santa Cruz County, posted a series of hate cartoons on its Web site. One cartoon featured a pregnant woman at a bus stop. She had three kids, a stroller, and a K-Mart bag. The caption was, "Have stroller, will travel...any where except Planned Parenthood." Other cartoons targeted seniors and the disabled ("Entitlement Cheque + Discount Bus Pass = Nothing to do but ride"), homeless people ("No smoking. No stiking. No chance."), and the mentally ill ("vehicle often contains a large quanity of manic-depressives and prolonged exposure is hazardous"). [Errors, and the British spelling of check, reflect the originals.]

Just as I began exposing the cartoons to elected officials and to the public, the UTU deleted them from its Web site. The local chairperson lied to elected officials, telling them that the cartoons had been deleted years ago, when I had a date-stamped print-out in my hand. The cartoons are copyrighted, so I cannot post them without risking a lawsuit from the cartoonist or the union. They OUGHT to have stayed up, so that bus riders could find out what the cartoonist -- and the union, to the extent that it published his cartoons -- really thinks of them.

Returning to the specific problem at hand, my suggestion would be to schedule another speaker back-to-back with Amir Abdemalik Ali, so that students could make up their own minds. Any hateful remarks that he might make would quickly be discredited.