Two Colleges, Two Different Responses to the Heckler’s Veto

Numerous colleges and universities are being investigated by Congress for antisemitism, not because presidents have failed to condemn misconduct, but because too many have learned how to do something easier: issue statements without enforcing rules. The modern university is fluent in the language of “deeply disturbing incidents” and “community values,” while increasingly reluctant to do the one thing that makes those values real: draw boundaries and uphold them.

That tension was on display in just the last week at two colleges now facing federal scrutiny: Haverford College and Sarah Lawrence College. Both experienced incidents involving antisemitic hostility and the disruption of public events. Both issued official responses. But their actions and their language reveal two very different models of institutional responsibility. One school treated disruption as an enforceable violation. The other treated it as an atmosphere to be processed.

At Haverford, an event featuring an Israeli journalist was disrupted by a protester using a bullhorn. The purpose was not dialogue but obstruction: to prevent the audience from hearing the speakers. This is the classic heckler’s veto, a tactic that has become increasingly common since October 7, as protest movements on campus have blurred into intimidation and shutdown. The heckler’s veto is not a protest. It is the substitution of coercion for persuasion.

The question for any institution is simple: does it protect the right to protest while also protecting the right to speak, listen, and learn?

Haverford’s response was direct. After reviewing the incident, the administration concluded that campus rules had been violated and permanently banned the disruptor from campus. Whatever one thinks of Haverford’s broader campus climate, this is what governance looks like. It draws a clear line between protest and coercion. The college did not simply lament what happened. It acted in a way meant to deter repetition.

Now consider Sarah Lawrence College. In the same week, President Cristle Collins Judd sent a campus-wide email addressing two incidents: an antisemitic slur - calling Ezra Klein a “Zionist Pig” - painted on the campus expression board, and repeated disruptions at an event featuring journalist Ezra Klein. Judd’s letter condemned both incidents and insisted there is “absolutely no place” for conduct that intimidates or dehumanizes others. Her message noted that both matters had been referred to the student conduct process, but refused to explicitly state that violations of campus conduct occurred - they did, without ambiguity.

What stands out here on the Judd comment is not the moral vocabulary; it is the deliberate institutional vagueness. The Klein event is described by Judd as involving “an atmosphere… of discomfort and intimidation” and disruptions that interfered with the audience’s ability “to hear and engage.” What never appears is the plain civic truth: a heckler’s veto occurred. This was not merely discomfort. It was obstruction. Speech was not merely challenged. It was shouted down.

Judd’s response was not only vague and noncommittal about the truth of what happened in the room - it was deliberately quiet. The January 29 email was sent only to the campus community. Sarah Lawrence has published no public statement about the Klein event on its website. No press release. No institutional acknowledgment that's visible to the outside world. Haverford, by contrast, made its Campus Safety director’s and its president’s messages available to the press and shared their actions and views openly. When an institution confines its response to an internal email while video of the disruption circulates to millions, it is not exercising discretion. It is hoping the moment will pass.

Some defenders will object that the Sarah Lawrence disruptions involved enrolled students, while Haverford’s ban applied to an outside protester. But that distinction does not lessen the obligation to enforce boundaries. It heightens it. Students are not strangers to campus rules. They sign conduct codes. They have been told repeatedly - especially over the last year - that protest is protected, but obstruction is not.

The heckler’s veto does not become more legitimate because it is carried out by students. It becomes more corrosive because it signals institutional permission. A college cannot claim to value free expression while treating student disruption as a special category requiring euphemism, delay, or administrative softness.

This is where the crisis becomes larger than any one incident. Liberal education depends on a basic civic bargain: people may disagree fiercely, but they must still share an environment in which argument is possible. Universities exist not to eliminate conflict, but to channel conflict into inquiry and persuasion rather than intimidation. When disruption replaces argument, the institution is no longer educating. It is merely managing competing factions.

Sarah Lawrence’s internal statement leans heavily on a familiar administrative formula: the incidents have been “referred for investigation.” But there is no great mystery about what occurred at the Ezra Klein event. The disruptions were public, repeated, and carried out in full view - then broadcast to millions online. Everyone knows what happened. In many cases, everyone knows exactly who was involved. When a college responds to that reality by promising an “investigation,” it is not gathering information. It is buying time, lowering expectations, and substituting process for consequence. The problem is not a lack of information. The problem is a lack of will.

At that point, procedural language is not neutrality. It is cover.

This cannot be separated from a broader institutional pattern. When colleges are pressed on accountability, they increasingly retreat to a new all-purpose justification: privacy. Administrators insist they cannot discuss disciplinary outcomes because student conduct matters are confidential. In principle, that is true. But in practice, the privacy rationale has become a convenient way to avoid signaling that rules are real. A college does not need to publish names to make clear that disruption carries consequences. “We cannot comment” has become a substitute for “we will act.”

The result is a perverse civic lesson. Students learn that public misconduct can be absorbed into a private process. The community learns that enforcement is invisible. And those targeted by harassment or intimidation learn that condemnation is decoupled from protection. In an age when disruptions are filmed, circulated, and watched by millions, institutional silence does not read as neutrality. It reads as permission.

The point is not that one college is perfect and the other uniquely flawed. Both campuses are struggling. But in the same week, facing similar challenges, the contrast is sharp. Haverford treated disruption as an enforceable offense. Sarah Lawrence treated disruption as an “atmosphere” and routed it into adjudication.

One approach asserts institutional authority. The other emphasizes institutional process. One draws a visible line. The other gestures toward “values” that are hollow.

This is why Congress is investigating these schools. Not because presidents fail to denounce hate - they denounce constantly - but because too many institutions have replaced enforcement with euphemism. Federally funded colleges have civil rights obligations. They cannot meet those obligations through statements alone.

A college cannot survive on speech about dialogue while permitting the systematic destruction of dialogue in practice. Either rules exist, or activists do. Either institutions enforce boundaries, or the heckler’s veto becomes the governing principle of campus life.

When disruption is watched by millions and consequences remain invisible, the message is unmistakable: obstruction is tolerated, accountability is optional, and intimidation works.

Higher education cannot be governed by press release. It requires the willingness to name the heckler’s veto for what it is and to stop it.