The Heckler’s Veto Is Killing Universities’ Credibility
On Monday night, UC Berkeley was the stage of a sadly familiar scene, with police struggling to contain fires, vandalism, and assaults outside the final stop of Turning Point USA’s campus tour. If this feels like déjà vu, it is. In 2017, protests over a Milo Yiannopoulos event on the campus also devolved into disruptive rioting. In both cases, the university issued boilerplate statements filled with vague platitudes defending free speech and condemning violence.
UC Berkeley is far from the only university to find itself in this situation over the last decade. According to the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression’s (FIRE) Campus Deplatforming Database, instances of the “heckler’s veto” – efforts to silence speakers through noise, intimidation, or violence – have risen since 2014, with only a brief pause during the COVID pandemic. The number of speakers targeted by “attempted” or “substantial” disruptions climbed from just 3 in 2021 to 79 in 2024.
This surge has coincided with a dramatic decline in the public’s view of higher education. Gallup reports that the share of Americans with “little” or “no” confidence in colleges and universities tripled between 2015 and 2024. Similarly, Monitoring the Future’s long-running survey of 12th-graders shows that the percentage of high-school seniors who think colleges do a “good” or “very good” job for the country fell from 62% to 42% over the last decade.
Experimental evidence confirms how damaging the “heckler’s veto” can be. In a survey I conducted last year, participants watched a 30-second, local news-style clip using real 2017 protest footage from UC Berkeley and Middlebury College, repackaged as taking place at a fictional “Jefferson University.” The clip showed protesters blocking entrances, throwing debris, and shouting down a speaker. Respondents were randomly assigned to view one of three versions of this clip: (1) the protest footage without a statement from the university; (2) the protest footage followed by a university statement condemning the protest; or (3) the protest footage followed by a university statement praising the protesters for exercising free speech. Immediately afterward, participants answered questions about their confidence in higher education and whether colleges are helping or hurting the country. A control group answered the same questions without viewing any video.
The results were striking. Watching even a brief clip of the “heckler’s veto” significantly worsened views of higher education. The percentage expressing “very little” confidence rose from 16% in the no-video control group to 22% among those who saw any version of the clip. The percentage saying colleges have a “negative effect” on the country grew from 43% to 48%. More importantly, university statements, regardless of whether they condemned or praised the protest, did nothing to restore confidence. Once the “heckler’s veto” was seen, the damage was done. Words from university leaders fell on deaf ears.
How, then, can colleges repair their reputations? The instinct for risk-averse administrators may be to avoid controversy by preemptively canceling contentious speakers. Yet, such cancellations would do more harm than good. Rather than restoring confidence, they would reinforce the perception that universities are unwilling to defend free expression.
A better path forward is to teach protest norms that are peaceful, principled, and non-coercive. There are already promising models for such instruction. FIRE, in partnership with New York University’s First Amendment Watch, offers free orientation modules that explain the legal limits on protest and the difference between expression and disruption. Similarly, universities such as Washington University, the University of Wisconsin–Eau Claire, and Appalachian State have introduced short videos on free expression as part of new-student orientation. Embedding these messages in orientation activities at the start of every student’s college education is likely to signal that civil protest is welcome but must be limited by rules against shout-downs, blockades, and violence.
For such educational efforts to truly succeed, however, they must reach the communities most supportive of illiberal protest. According to FIRE’s 2025 College Free Speech Rankings survey, students from historically marginalized groups are far more likely to view “heckler’s veto” tactics as acceptable. Nearly 60% of “agender” students and about half of “genderqueer,” “nonbinary,” or “unsure” students say “using violence” can be acceptable, compared with only 32% of men and 29% of women. Similarly, Asian (40%), Black (40%), Middle Eastern (41%), and Hispanic (35%) students were significantly more likely than white students (27%) to say that “using violence” can be acceptable.
Majors with disproportionately high numbers of “disruption-endorsing” students should also be prioritized in efforts to reduce support for the “heckler’s veto.” FIRE’s data show that while more than half of Ethnic and Gender studies majors say that “using violence” can be acceptable, less than a third of Humanities, Visual and Performing Arts, STEM, and Social Sciences majors do. Curricular changes that emphasize free inquiry, debate, and pluralism are clearly needed in these programs.
University leaders know they are failing. In a recent Inside Higher Ed survey, 57% of college presidents admitted they have been “not at all effective” in addressing higher education’s “crisis of confidence.” Yet the path forward is clear. Colleges must pair explicit, viewpoint-neutral policies with serious instruction in the norms of peaceful protest. Restoring confidence will depend less on what administrators say after a disruption and more on whether they prevent one from happening in the first place.
