This is a great post, and I think the commodification of higher education and everything has also led to a problem of TOO MUCH tolerance. Not of people or ideas, but of behavior.
There’s been a slide towards accepting almost all outbursts of opinion, no matter how incoherent or disruptive, as legitimate expression that must be accommodated. To the point where disruption of others‘ free expression or preventing people from hearing ideas you don’t like is elevated to an equal level of expression.
A student who is disrupting a class like this should be told to sit down and STFU or leave. Don’t like the content or disagree? Professors have structured times for students to question or push back. If you’re really pissed you can leave, you can write letters to the paper or dean, you can stand outside with a placard. But erupting in anger and derailing a lecture is not legitimate expression. Screaming and preventing others from hearing a guest lecture is not expression, it’s anti-expression. It’s like pressing an air horn on a theatre.
And there’s undoubtedly been a trend towards accepting and accommodating disruptive “expression” that has only the goal of silencing voices you don’t like. And every time the curators of spaces intended for dialogue, exchange of ideas, and learning treat that form of disagreement and disruption as acceptable, they send the message that it is effective and legitimate.