Disruptive speech to be panel’s topic at PVCC discussion

An upcoming panel discussion at Piedmont Virginia Community College will explore disruptive political speech, such as U.S. Rep. Joe Wilson’s “you lie” outburst during a joint session of Congress and the anti-war slogans shouted by protesters during former President George W. Bush’s visit to Monticello last year.

The panel discussion, titled “Free Speech or Disruption: Balancing the Rights to Speak and to Hear,” will be held from 3 to 5 p.m. Nov. 15 in the V. Earl Dickinson Building at PVCC.

The forum, which will be free and open to the public, is jointly sponsored by PVCC and the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression.

Panelists will include Bob Gibson, director of the Sorensen Institute for Political Leadership at the University of Virginia; Elaine Jones, retired director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund; Dahlia Lithwick, senior editor for Slate.com and contributing editor for Newsweek; Robert M. O’Neil, director of the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression; and John W. Whitehead, president of the Rutherford Institute.

Coy Barefoot, host of the “Charlottesville Right Now” radio show on WINA, will moderate the discussion.

Each member of the audience will receive a free copy of the book “The Bill of Rights, the Courts and the Law,” courtesy of the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities.