Earlier this week, Brown University students and residents of Providence shamed the school by shouting down NYC police commissioner Ray Kelly.

The Brown administration has acknowledged the public relations disaster created by this week’s disgraceful protest by holding an impromptu forum hosted by university president Christina Paxson.

Charlotte Bruce Harvey of Brown’s alumni magazine reports.

Paxson Calls Impromptu Community Forum

On October 30 President Christina Paxson convened an impromptu community forum in Alumnae Hall as a response to a protest the previous day by community and student activists, who’d forced the cancellation of a talk by New York City Police Department Commissioner Ray Kelly. More than 600 students, along with faculty members and administrators, participated in the two-hour forum, which began with speeches by students and faculty that addressed a variety of issues the protest raised. After the speeches, the audience broke into small-group discussions, and then reconvened for an open-mic session at which students and faculty could address the entire audience.

Comments on the article were not kind.

The only way change occurs in a civilized society (and the U.S. still meets that criterion) is through dialog. I am embarrassed that there are students at Brown who don’t know this and I am saddened that there may be New Yorkers who could benefit from effective activism on their behalf and did not get any in this instance.
Howard Yaruss, Class of 1980

Amen to that.
Dale Truman, Class of 1968

This is why I never sent my children to Brown University. Freedom of Speech is something that the Universities across the nation is stopping. Students who graduate from our HIgh Priced Universities not being able to THINK for themselves. We see it all the time in the real world.
Mr Heckled

Sad day when Brown stifles free speech — no matter who is exercising it; no matter what their point of view may be.
Shocked