A panel convened by UC-Berkeley to study free speech on the campus concluded that the violence associated with conservative speakers in 2017 was the fault of the conservatives themselves — not the leftist thugs who perpetrated the riots. The university’s Commission on Free Speech sent its report to Chancellor Carol Crist on April 10.
The commission, which was made up of Berkeley students and faculty, originally convened last October to study the violent leftist protests associated with conservative speakers throughout 2017 and whether free speech was under attack. “Our conclusion is that the rise of ultra-conservative rhetoric, including white supremacists’ views and protests marches, legitimized by the 2016 election and its aftermath, encouraged far-right and alt-right activists to ‘spike the football’ at Berkeley,” the report determined.
The report went to great lengths to let the chancellor know how “tolerant” UC-Berkeley is. “Contrary to a popular narrative, Berkeley remains a tolerant campus. An office of Planning and Analysis survey of incoming Fall 2017 students found that three-quarters of them agree that ‘the University has the responsibility to provide equal access to safe and secure venues for guest speakers of all viewpoints — even if the ideas are found offensive by some or conflict with the values held by the UC-Berkeley community.”
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But the panel misses the central point of that survey completely. The fact that one-quarter of incoming freshman don’t believe that the university should provide equal access is a problem. Also, this study was of incoming freshman. Polls show that support for free speech goes down the longer a student is in school and exposed to the leftist indoctrination that passes for curriculum.
The report singles out Milo Yiannopoulos and Ann Coulter as key contributors to the campus chaos. “Milo Yiannopoulos and Ann Coulter, however, expressed little interest in reasoned discussion of contentious issues or in defending or revising their views through argument. Many Commission members are skeptical of these speakers’ commitment to anything other than the pursuit of wealth and fame through the instigation of anger, fear and vengefulness in their hard-right constituency.”
The report went on to insinuate that Yiannopoulos’ and Coulter’s sole reason for coming to Berkeley was to incite the violence that occurred. The panel also took aim at the student groups who invited the conservative speakers, saying that, “The assertion of individual rights at the expense of social responsibility by a handful of students had enormous consequences for the campus.”
Yiannopoulos scoffed at the panel’s conclusions. “No one who has actually attended a Milo talk would say my mission is to solely offend or that I’m an insubstantial purveyor of stunts. I always prefer to give my talk. I care about my subjects. But it gets Berkeley off the hook, doesn’t it?”
Coulter has yet to respond to the new Berkeley report but in the wake of the university’s cancellation of one of her speeches last year said, “It’s sickening when a radical, thuggish institution like Berkeley can so easily snuff out the cherished American right to free speech.”
The committee suggested that Coulter and Yiannopoulos and others the Berkeley community deems “offensive” take their speech off campus. “Although those speakers had every right to speak and were entitled to protection, they did not need to be on campus to exercise the right of free speech,” the report said. “Indeed, at least some of the events at Berkeley can now be seen to be part of a coordinated campaign to organize appearances on American campuses likely to incite a violent reaction, in order to advance a facile narrative that universities are not tolerant of conservative speech.”
So, it was all a conservative conspiracy, Berkeley? Really?
The lead conspiracy theorists of the report were co-chairs of the committee: Prudence Carter, dean of the Graduate School of Education and R. Jay Wallace of the Department of Psychology. The committee went on to suggest adding more “free speech zones” and to make police presence at future events “less intimidating” since many of the students were “traumatized” by the heavy police presence at the Ben Shapiro event that occurred in September of 2017. They also suggested “counter programming” during controversial events, so that triggered students have an option rather than violent protesting. One such counter-programming event suggested that the radical Southern Poverty Law Center host a teach-in to offset controversial events.
The report never blames the student protestors themselves. It never mentions ANTIFA or any of the other leftist groups that wielded weapons, vandalized buildings, and started fires. Instead it came to the conclusion that the violence was the fault of the speakers and some unseen, unprovable “coordinated campaign” designed to cause a ruckus. Berkeley’s Commission on Free Speech toiled for seven months in order to blame the victims of mob violence, instead of the perpetrators.
Image: Screenshot from berkeley.edu
