Anybody who witnessed Kevin Barrett’s obnoxious heckling at David Horowitz’s lecture Monday night saw something truly tragic — the irrelevant ranting of a man briefly assuming a limelight he no longer inhabits. It never really mattered that Mr. Barrett believes the Sept. 11 attacks were orchestrated by the Bush administration, a theory even Noam Chomsky dismisses as complete non-scientific rubbish. The UW Board of Regents properly stood up for Mr. Barrett’s First Amendment rights when it refused to fire him over his beliefs, regardless of inaccuracy.
The saga of Mr. Barrett should have been over long before this. But now it can be said to have officially ended, in the most pathetic and discrediting of fashions. By demonstrating his willingness to shout down a campus speaker, denying Mr. Horowitz his right to speak, Mr. Barrett proves he was never concerned with First Amendment rights in the first place. All that inspiring rhetoric about his noble free speech crusade, in an effort to represent an unrepresented position, was utter bullshit. Mr. Barrett might have otherwise gone down in UW history as an unlikely symbol of the free speech we value so much. But alas, he has shown himself to be the undemocratic, bullying heckler that he is. The only one spitting on the Constitution all this time, ultimately, has been Mr. Barrett himself.
Eric R. Schmidt
UW Junior, Political Science
