Young America’s Foundation, BridgeCal and Berkeley College Republicans have been working together to produce a lecture at UC-Berkeley on April 27, 2017, by Ann Coulter, a twelve-time bestselling author, whose book, “Adios, America!” – a No. 2 New York Times bestseller — is widely credited with shaping President Donald Trump’s immigration views. The topic of her speech was immigration. UC-Berkeley, a publicly-funded university, first imposed a series of ridiculous requirements on the speech allegedly in the name of “safety.” Coulter, we were informed, would be required to deliver her speech in the afternoon; only students would be allowed to attend; and the speech location would not be announced until close to the event. Against our advice, Coulter agreed to all these requirements. In return, she requested two measures, which actually had something to do with safety: 1) That the University of California chancellor request that the Oakland chief of police refrain from telling his men to stand down and ignore law-breaking by rioters attempting to shut down conservative speakers, as he has done in the past; and 2) That UC-Berkeley announce in advance that any students engaging in violence, mayhem or heckling to prevent an invited speaker from speaking would be expelled. As Coulter explained, “If Berkeley wants to have free speech, it can have it.” The university’s response was to ban her speech. This is as clear-cut a case as it gets that public universities are using taxpayer dollars to shut down conservative speech, while allowing liberal speech only. UC-Berkeley has for example, welcomed the corrupt former President of Mexico, Vicente Fox, who has cursed at and mocked Donald Trump, currently the President of the United States. The university, and U-C chancellor Janet Napolitano personally, have revealed themselves to be using taxpayer money for an unconstitutional purpose. Even after Coulter went along with their ruses and guises to shut down her speech, they simply announced, like Kim Jung Un, that it was cancelled. We have no intention of acceding to these unconstitutional acts. The Ann Coulter lecture sponsored by Young America’s Foundation will go forward. For more information or to cover this story contact Spencer Brown at 800-872-1776.
