Minutemen, Columbians and free speech?

So for those missing the hoopla here in NYC, on October 4th, the head of the Minuteman Project was speaking at Columbia when demonstrators stormed the stage. To put it safely, conflict ensued, and the event ended. Free speech stifled??? Liberal wackos?? FOX et al have been playing it big, and Columbia is finding itself in a bad PR scene once again.

It all raises interesting questions about the limits of free speech. Do the Minuteman go into the realm of 'hate speech' -- whatever that means? Is there a point where one has the 'right' to try to shut speech down? And tactically, is shutting down speech a good idea?

How, practically, can we stop this idea that people in power need to have their speech 'defended', just as people not in power actually do need to have their speech defended?

And does that really apply here? The Minuteman Group gets plenty of play in the U.S. They have disproportionate power given their numbers, certainly, but still, the world is rather far from what they'd want it to be.

President Bollinger's statement lays out the argument that free speech is paramount and shouldn't be shut down.

The demonstrators -- led by the Chicano Caucus at Columbia -- have taken a bit of an odd stance. While fiercely criticizing Minuteman (saying it is hate speech, that they shouldn't have been allowed on campus and that it must be confronted forcefully, etc), they simultaneously are trying to maintain that their intention was not to shut the speech down. This is what Monique Dols implies in the NYT piece, and also what Karina Garcia says in the Democracy Now inerview:

"We never asked for the university or for anybody, for that matter, to ban this man from speaking."

So basically they wanted to disrupt the speech, but did not intend to block it, and insist that Gilchrist, the Minuteman guy, could have kept going. Mmm, okay. But that's a pretty tricky line to credibly argue.

For what it's worth, here are the videos:
Univision
CTV

Last but not least, does anyone really spell 'protestor' this way???