Columbia Protesters Oust Minuteman
by Advocate Staff
On Wednesday, October 4th, left leaning student groups from across the city, including the CUNY Internationalist Group, gathered to protest a scheduled speech by the co-founder and spokesman of the Minuteman Project Jim Gilchrist. Gilchrist, who was invited by the Columbia College Republicans, was interrupted when a group of students from Columbia’s Chicano Caucus climbed on stage with a banner reading “Say no to Racism.” The melee that followed has become the source of a significant amount of debate, sparking discussions of the limits of free speech and public discourse on campuses across the country.
Gilchrist is the author of Minutemen: the Battle to Secure America’s Borders and is an outspoken critic of current immigration law. His organization aims to prevent illegal immigration across American borders through political action and the creation of citizen border patrol groups. The Minutemen argue that they are “Americans doing the job that Congress won’t do,” but they have been widely criticized by many immigrant groups for supporting a racist and nativist political agenda. Although Gilchrist and his organization have taken pains to separate themselves from racist and nativist groups, many, including the Southern Poverty Law Center, say that the minuteman project has become a cover for neo-Nazis and racist extremist groups like the National Alliance, whose members openly advocate violent vigilantism on US borders.
Protesters at Wednesday’s rally posted an official response to the events on the internet.
“Fascist scapegoating is not up for academic discussion. Like Hitler in pre-Nazi Germany, Gilchrist and the Minutemen attempt to demonize foreign-born poor people, blaming “illegals” for society’s problems. His group doesn’t present reasoned debate. It spouts racism and hatred, aiming to divide people.”
But official criticism of the protests was swift and overwhelming. President Bollinger of Columbia University responded to the proteststs in a public statement on Friday, condemning the use of intimidation to silence speakers:
“It is unacceptable to seek to deprive another person of his or her right of expression through actions such as taking a stage and interrupting the speech. We rightly have a visceral rejection of this behavior, because we all sense how easy it is to slide from our collective commitment to the hard work of intellectual confrontation to the easy path of physical brutishness. When the latter happens, we know instinctively we are all threatened.”
Similarly, Mayor Bloomberg criticized Bollinger and Columbia University saying “I don’t care whether you’re from the hard left, the hard right .… if you get invited, whoever invites you should have the courtesy to let you speak and provide the protection so that you can do it.”
Gilchrist responded that Columbia “is a gutter school. The students are not being taught how to learn but how to hate.… It is a shame that we cannot discuss the issues.”
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