SANTA ANA Calif. — The Muslim students stood up to shout last year at the Israeli ambassador, halting for 20 minutes his talk on U.S.-Israel relations to a California university audience in a protest that left several students facing charges and has evolved into a broader legal tussle over whose free-speech rights were violated.
Opening statements were scheduled Wednesday in the trial of 10 students on misdemeanor charges of conspiring to disturb a meeting and disturbing a meeting for interrupting Ambassador Michael Oren’s speech at the University of California, Irvine, in February 2010.
Students insist they had a right to protest. But Orange County District Attorney Tony Rackauckas contends that right ended when it infringed on the wishes of hundreds of members of the public who had come to hear Oren.
The case has generated an impassioned debate about free speech and raised questions about prosecutorial discretion as some members of the public, including some who disapproved of the Muslim students’ actions, say student protests are nothing new and the case is a colossal waste of taxpayers’ money.
The students, many who have since graduated from college, say they are being singled out because they are Muslim and that similar protests on other college campuses didn’t elicit criminal charges.
“This is selective punishment,” said Kifah Shah, a spokeswoman for a campaign of community activists in support of the defendants. “At this point, it is not just about these 10 students anymore. It is about every single one of us and about whether our right to freedom of speech is going to be upheld.”
That isn’t how everyone sees it. Michael Shapiro, a law professor at the University of Southern California, said charging the students with conspiracy isn’t necessary to uphold free speech rights in this case since campus authorities already did so by enabling Oren to give his talk and by disciplining students who participated in the outburst.
