Tear gas. Rubber bullets. Expulsions, arrests, prosecutions, and prison time.

Authorities should use whatever lawful methods are necessary to stop low-life rowdies from shouting down, shutting down, or using violence at college speaking events. Crack down. Hard.

Violence shut down urban streets April 18 as part of protests against a University of Pittsburgh forum on “transgender rights” featuring libertarian Brad Polumbo and traditionalist Michael Knowles. Polumbo, a former colleague at the Washington Examiner, tweeted that the event itself proceeded appropriately (except for one early disturbance ) but that the protesters who “set off fireworks in the street” need to “grow the hell up.”

As reported by Gabrielle Etzel at the indispensable Campus Reform, with plenty of video documentation, protesters outside the forum chanted that the event should be shut down, set fire to an effigy of Knowles, and threw flares and smoke bombs toward ticketed would-be attendees. Only the presence of a large contingent of police kept the protest from escalating to further violence.

“We felt unsafe the whole time because there was this mob outside screaming; there was this underlying level of tension,” Polumbo told me. “We were hearing explosions, and we didn't know what they were. And so it’s just very sad to me that on a college campus where debate should be open, you can't debate controversial ideas without feeling physically unsafe.”

Both to enter and to leave the event, Polumbo had to be escorted by private security guards, the entrance just 10 feet away from a “very hostile environment … this kinda out of control mob,” and exit very quickly post-event through an obscure back entrance.

Although the mob’s use of incendiary devices that (as videos show) could easily have hurt someone badly, no arrests were made.

The protests were mostly aimed not at Polumbo but at Knowles, who once said transgenderism as a public “ideology” should be “eradicated from public life.” Still, it matters not why the protesters were angry. Any mature adult can express anger and, even better, make a persuasive argument without trying to shut down a speech or, if denied that opportunity, causing mayhem on the streets. Again and again at college campuses, though, immature brats try to stop speech or discussion from even taking place. The brats often succeed.

And, worse, the way they succeed often involves threats or actual violence . Swimmer Riley Gaines was assaulted and then locked in a room for three hours two weeks ago at San Francisco State University. Pro-life students were attacked at their own meeting last month at Virginia Commonwealth University. Hooligans at the University of California, Berkeley caused more than $100,000 of damage at a protest in 2017. Lawyer Kristen Waggoner had to be escorted from Yale Law School in 2022 for her own safety without being able to finish her event. Author Heather Mac Donald has had numerous speeches interrupted, sometimes with those who wanted to listen being physically barred from attending. And so on.

None of these protest activities are acceptable. The moment a protest turns into a denial of someone else’s speech or ability to hear speech, much more into threats or actual violence, is the moment administrators should step in. And if administrators cower or fail, then police must act with as much careful use of force as necessary to allow the speech or debate to proceed.

And, yes, for the thugs who continue to use less-than-human tactics, especially violence, they have committed dangerous offenses against constitutional democracy itself. Arrests and serious prison time would be appropriate.

If hoodlums want to escalate, then escalate the stew out of them — right into spare, lonely cell blocks.