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Earlier this month, while all eyes were on Charles Murray’s disastrous visit to Middlebury College, you may have missed another speaker protested for his talk on a college campus. The protest this speaker encountered, however, led to a very different outcome.

Flemming Rose sparked worldwide controversy when he commissioned and published cartoons of the prophet Muhammad in 2005 as culture editor of the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten. Rose spoke at Franklin & Marshall College March 2, the same day Murray went to Middlebury.

Rose came to the college after being invited by Matthew Hoffman, chair of Judaic studies at F&M, and though Rose faced protests, all reports indicate that the event was engaging and challenged the speaker. Several dozen protesters gathered in F&M’s packed Stahr Auditorium where Rose spoke.

Inside Higher Ed :

At Franklin & Marshall, Rose spoke — without incident, except for some raised voices in conversations before the event — even as students organized a protest that did not disrupt the lecture.

College officials at F&M are proud of the way their students — both those who wanted to hear Rose and those who disagree with him — handled the visit. And they point to both policies and practices at the college that encouraged nondisruptive protest and that might be applied elsewhere.

According to , Rose gave his full talk without interruption and fielded questions from students on a variety of hot-button issues.

“There have been a number of social critics — in and outside of the academy — who have labeled an entire generation of students as illiberal crybullies,” F&M president Daniel R. Porterfield told Inside Higher Ed. “If you work at a college campus, you know that these sweeping denunciations are not accurate. Many students in the last two years have protested speech that they felt was offensive to them in a pro-speech manner, but you don’t read a lot of descriptions of the media about pro-speech protest.”

F&M recently adopted based in part on the Chicago Statement. Its conclusion explains:

In short, the College holds the core principle that debate or deliberation should not be suppressed because of the ideas put forth.  We support a climate of inclusiveness in which all members are encouraged to contest vigorously the ideas and the speech that they oppose.

Among the most prevalent arguments for shouting down or no-platforming controversial speakers is that their ideas and speech are too dangerous to be heard. When these speakers are given a platform, so the argument goes, counter-speech will be insufficient to protect against seductive and hateful ideas. But by acting within the spirit of vigorous debate, F&M students were able to bring a controversial figure to their campus and have the speaker sufficiently challenged and heard at the same time.

In the process, F&M students respected the rights of students to engage with speakers on campus, and students showed that countering speech with more speech is a productive and effective way to respond to a controversial speaker on campus.

F&M still maintains a campus policy that earns ��֭����’s worst, “red light” rating for its restrictions on speech. F&M should build on the foundation laid with its Statement on Freedom of Expression — and its commitment to allow its students to “contest vigorously the ideas and the speech that they oppose” — by reforming its remaining speech codes to ensure the greatest protection for student speech rights. FIREwould be happy to lend a hand.

To hear more about Flemming Rose on free speech, check out our extensive interview with him on a recent episode of our “” podcast.