At Berkeley, a Pro-Palestinian Protest Disrupts a Dinner at a Dean’s Home

U.S.|At Berkeley, a Protest at a Dean’s Home Tests the Limits of Free Speech https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/12/us/uc-berkeley-palestinian-protest-free-speech.html U.S. World Business Arts Lifestyle Opinion Audio Games Cooking Wirecutter The Athletic You have a preview view of this article while we are checking your access. When we have confirmed access, the full article content will load. Pro-Palestinian supporters disrupted […]

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At Berkeley, a Pro-Palestinian Protest Disrupts a Dinner at a Dean’s Home

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U.S.|At Berkeley, a Protest at a Dean’s Home Tests the Limits of Free Speech

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/12/us/uc-berkeley-palestinian-protest-free-speech.html

You have a preview view of this article while we are checking your access. When we have confirmed access, the full article content will load.

Pro-Palestinian supporters disrupted a dinner for law students. There was a tussle over the microphone and conflicting claims of harm.

Erwin Chemerinsky, in a sweater, stands in a reading room lined with books on the walls and shelves.
Erwin Chemerinsky has supported speech rights for pro-Palestinian students. But this incident shows how the Israel-Hamas war has complicated the debate. Credit…Carolyn Fong for The New York Times

The dean of Berkeley’s law school is known as a staunch supporter of free speech, but things became personal for him when pro-Palestinian students disrupted a celebratory dinner party for some 60 students at his home.

In a viral video, Erwin Chemerinsky, a noted constitutional scholar, can be seen shouting “Please leave our house! You are guests in our house!” as a third-year law student, Malak Afaneh, interrupted the event on Tuesday, speaking into a microphone to the students gathered in the dean’s backyard in Oakland, Calif.

Mr. Chemerinsky’s wife, Catherine Fisk, also a Berkeley law professor, can be seen with her arm around Ms. Afaneh, trying to yank the microphone away and pulling the student up a couple steps.

Ms. Afaneh and her supporters, who were invited to the dinner, described Ms. Fisk’s struggle for the microphone as a disproportionate and violent response. Students, they said, had a right to speak at a university gathering. The dinner was open to all third-year law students and paid for by the university, according to Mr. Chemerinsky.

Mr. Chemerinsky and his supporters say that the students, who brought their own microphone and amp, had no such right in a private home, at a dinner with no planned remarks.

Mr. Chemerinsky has supported speech rights for pro-Palestinian students, including the right to block Zionists from speaking to their groups.

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