In fact, the Ray Kelly incident was the first in a series of academic freedom cases to sweep the nation. The events of October 30, 2013, unleashed an impassioned and timeless debate about the boundaries of academic freedom at Brown University and other institutions across the United States.
As soon as he began to speak, many protesters stood with their fists in the air and began shouting in unison, after which … could not regain control of the auditorium.” After thirty minutes, the speech was cancelled. As reported by the Brown Daily Herald, “When Kelly himself took the stage, protesters’ boos mixed with applause. But the heavy presence of the Providence Police in the first row of the auditorium elicited an irrepressible reaction from the protestors. Protestors had meticulously prepared short statements to read in the lecture hall before sitting down to listen to Ray Kelly deliver his speech on stop-and-frisk, a de facto form of racial-profiling implemented by the NYPD in an attempt to drive down crime rates during Kelly’s tenure as Police Commissioner. Yet, as students filed into the LIST auditorium to hear Kelly speak, the protest quickly tumbled out of control. Amid chants of “No justice, no peace, no racist police,” the students participated in a rich legacy of student protest that they had inherited from luminary Brown alums, such as Elliot Maxwell and Ira Magaziner – the original champions of the Open Curriculum in the 1960s. As the orchestrated protest gained momentum outside the LIST Art Center, it exuded an energy singular to Brown’s vibrant culture of student activism. When New York City Police Commissioner Ray Kelly arrived on campus that day to deliver a speech entitled “Proactive Policing in America’s Biggest City,” he was greeted by a mass of student protestors brandishing signs with the words “Ray(cist) Kelly” in bold, red letters. On October 30, 2013, student grievances at Brown University reached a boiling point.
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