The days of universities like UC Berkeley allowing Antifa thugs to cause chaos and prevent conservative speakers from having their First Amendment freedoms protected may be coming to an end.
The far-left university has come under intense fire in recent years for failing to provide a safe space (a literal safe space, not to be confused with the liberal snowflake version) for conservatives to speak. Famously, Milo Yiannopoulos’s event at Berkeley saw Antifa terrorists go wild, starting a riot, and setting fire to the campus. Since then, UC Berkeley has refused to even entertain conservative speakers unless they come equipped with their own security and, in some cases, speak off campus.
Angry at the double standard and the willingness with which UC Berkeley has surrendered to far-left fascists, two conservative groups have filed suit against the school. And this week, they got a high-profile supporter in the form of the Trump administration.
From the L.A. Times:
The Justice Department on Thursday filed a statement of interest supporting two conservative groups who sued the school last year. The groups alleged that administrators and campus events policy unfairly hampered their ability to book right-leaning speakers like Ann Coulter and ultimately led to the events being canceled or modified.
Associate Atty. Gen. Rachel Brand wrote in a Fox News opinion piece that certain Berkeley policies relating to location restrictions — among other things — are onerous and applied selectively. “It doesn’t require much creativity to turn this policy into a heckler’s veto,” she wrote Thursday.
She criticized the policies of several colleges across the country but was sure to single out Berkeley.
“Free speech is under attack at college campuses across the country,” Brand wrote. “The problem is not limited to a few colleges barring radical speakers to avoid a riot. Universities large and small, public and private, are restricting students’ and professors’ speech or enabling others to silence speech with which they disagree.”
Protests are one thing, but when those protests threaten the safety and security of those trying to present a point of view, the onus is on the college to crack down. Cracking down does not mean bowing to the protesters and giving them exactly what they want, either. That’s insanity. That’s how we lose freedom of speech. Any idiot can see that.
So, too, can the administrators at UC Berkeley. You think they would cancel liberal speakers if there were alt-right riots greeting their presence on campus? Hell no. They would have every cop on the Western seaboard there to protect Linda Sarsour, Gloria Steinem, or Michael Moore. But if it’s Ann Coulter or Ben Shapiro? Bah, we don’t have to protect THEM.
Well, yes. Yes you do. You owe it to your students and you owe it to the Constitution. Hopefully, a court will decide the same.
