College Suspends Students Involved In Blocking Speech Of Police Policy Expert, Heather Mac Donald

Five Claremont College students were suspended for their roles in blocking people from listening to police policy speaker Heather Mac Donald.

Students Played Role In Blocking Entrance To Heather Mac Donald Event

Claremont, California – Claremont McKenna College suspended three students for a year and two others for a semester for their role in blocking the entrance to a door and not allowing people to listen to a pro-police speaker.

The college didn’t identify the students who were part of the larger Black Lives Matter protest on campus to stop Heather Mac Donald from giving her talk.

Mac Donald is a policy expert at the Manhattan Institute, a New York think tank. She wrote the book “The War on Cops: How the New Attack on Law and Order Makes Everyone Less Safe” in 2016 that warned that raced-based attacks on the police and the criminal-justice system from the White House on down are putting lives at risk.

The college charged 10 students with breaking school policies. Five students received suspensions, two more students were put on probation and three students were cleared of wrongdoing.

Four of the suspended students were seniors who had their degrees revoked until they complete their suspensions, the Los Angeles Times reported.

Claremont College is one of seven affiliated Claremont Colleges and the school has turned over evidence involving students enrolled at the other campuses.

A three-member panel that included a faculty member, a staff member and a student decided the cases, the LA Times reported.

From the original story on the protests:

According to Breitbart, the anti-police protests began before Ms. Mac Donald’s scheduled lecture Thursday evening, April 6.  Student protesters shouted “F–k the police” and “Black Lives Matter,” and banged on windows. This forced the lecture to be live-streamed online instead of in-person as originally scheduled.

All students involved with blocking access to the building were committing a crime, although no arrests were made.

On Wednesday, April 5, a similar event was shut down by protesters at UCLA.

According to Ms. MacDonald:

“The protesters surrounded all the doors to the Atheneum where I was supposed to speak, so none of the students who had signed up to attend my lecture could get in.  I was hustled from my guest suite by several police officers from Claremont PD into the lecture hall. It was decided that I would give the speech for live streaming to a largely empty hall. The organizers moved the podium so that it would not be visible through the windows to the students surrounding the building once night fell. We jumpstarted the timing of my talk as the crowd seemed to be getting more unruly.”

During her speech, protesters banged on the windows and shouted.  It was so noisy that it was difficult for Ms. MacDonald to speak on livestream, and she was able to take only two questions from students before Claremont Police Officers told her it was out of control outside.

In her too-short lecture, Ms. Mac Donald said that her research had shown that there is no institution more dedicated to protecting black lives than cops.  She also talked about gang violence, and said that while it was likely the protesters didn’t show up to the “scenes of carnage,”  the cops did.

Ms. Mac Donald said, “They are the only government agency that works every day to ensure that black lives matter.”

The vice-president for academic affairs at Claremont McKenna College, Peter Uvin, said “What we face here is not an attempt to demonstrate, or to ask tough questions of our speaker, all of which are both protected and cherished on this campus, but rather to make it impossible for her to speak, for you to listen, and for all of us to debate.”

Black Lives Matter is unable to have a rational discussion supported by facts because their platform is entirely devoid of any facts.

Claremont McKenna President Hiram Chodosh released the following statement, promising to hold involved students accountable for their behavior.

Dear CMC Community:

As you know, in a coordinated attempt to shut down Heather Mac Donald’s lecture last night, a large group of students from the Claremont Colleges, including a small number of CMC students and some individuals from external communities, gathered to protest and blocked guests from entering the Athenaeum.

Based on the judgment of the Claremont Police Department, we jointly concluded that any forced interventions or arrests would have created unsafe conditions for students, faculty, staff, and guests. I take full responsibility for the decision to err on the side of these overriding safety considerations.

Notwithstanding these efforts to stifle a speaker, Heather Mac Donald was able to give her presentation to a small audience at the Athenaeum. We also live-streamed her talk. Nearly 250 people viewed the presentation live, and her presentation that is posted on our CMC homepage has already been viewed over 1,400 times. In the end, the effort to silence her voice effectively amplified it to a much larger audience.

Blocking access to buildings violates College policy. CMC students who are found to have violated policies will be held accountable. We will also give a full report to the other Claremont Colleges, who have responsibility for their own students.

Finally, the breach of our freedoms to listen to views that challenge us and to engage in dialogue about matters of controversy is a serious, ongoing concern we must address effectively. Accordingly, we will be developing new strategies for how best to protect open, safe access to our events.

I want to thank all of the staff, students, and faculty who worked to manage the evening at the Athenaeum, to keep everyone safe, and to ensure that Heather Mac Donald was able to communicate her presentation.

We will be in touch with further developments.

A video posted online by the Claremont Independent shows a portion of the anti-police demonstration up to the point where the reporter was threatened with violence and blocked from recording further. Further below, we’ve included a sample video with information presented by Heather Mac Donald:

Heather Mac Donald information: