Ahead of next week’s scheduled campus lecture by Ann Coulter, UC-Berkeley is pulling out all the stops in an attempt to prevent students from hearing a conservative viewpoint.
These dirty tricks of the Left have been used for years to stifle free speech, obstruct the free exchange of ideas, and persecute conservative students.
Citing an unwritten policy that could not be backed up by any rule on the books, Berkeley’s administration, the UC Police Department, and Berkeley PD mandated that any event featuring a high-profile speaker must end by 3:00pm, per YAF sources. It appears that this unvetted policy is being selectively enforced on the conservative students hosting Coulter in conjunction with Young America’s Foundation, as other events with high profile speakers are not being held to the 3:00pm end-time.
For example, former Mexican President Vicente Fox is speaking at Berkeley on April 19 from 3:00-4:30pm. On April 17 as a counterpoint to Coulter’s speech on immigration, former Deputy Chief of Staff to President Clinton Maria Echaveste is speaking from 6:45-8:30pm.
Why wouldn’t a speech by a former head of state be subject to the 3pm cutoff rule being leveraged against conservative students and Ann Coulter? And why is the leftist counter to Coulter’s speech being allowed to speak in the evening?
Based on these circumstances, only one conclusion can be drawn: Berkeley is using administrative intimidation and bureaucracy to unconstitutionally prevent conservative students from advancing conservative ideas on campus.
“UC Berkeley has enacted punitive policies towards the Berkeley College Republicans as a result of their incompetence and mishaps the night of the disgraceful Milo Yiannopoulos protest,” said Naweed Tahmas, a member of the conservative club organizing Coulter’s YAF-sponsored lecture. “These new policies are unwritten, subjective, and used in a discriminatory manner to censor conservative speakers. Liberal speakers have the privilege of speaking in the evening, while conservative speakers are only allowed to speak before 3:00pm.”
Leftist opposition to Coulter has been hyperbolic. Some posters put up by a group called ‘Refuse Fascism’ proclaim “WARNING!!! FASCISTS ARE ZEROING-IN ON BERKELEY” and refer to Coulter, author of a dozen New York Times bestsellers, as “a total fascist known for… viciously unfunny ‘humor.'” The posters go on to say that “normalization of the radical reactionary right in this country is the accommodation of & collaboration with actual fascists!” Berkeley leftists’ boogey-man rhetoric lumps President Trump in with Coulter, calling him “a vile narcissist with a twitter feed with a bunch of racist billionaires surrounding him.”
Young America’s Foundation is pursuing all remedies to protect the First Amendment freedoms of its students at UC-Berkeley.
