Archive for the ‘Ann Coulter’ Category

I invited Ann Coulter to speak at UC Berkeley. Heres why …

By Pranav Jandhyala By Pranav Jandhyala April 27 Pranav Jandhyala is a freshman at the University of California at Berkeley, where he is the founder and co-president of BridgeUSA at Berkeley.

University of California at Berkeley freshman Pranav Jandhyala is the founder and co-president of BridgeUSA, the nonpartisan organization that invited conservative commentator Ann Coulter to campus. (Victoria Walker/The Washington Post)

I am the founder of BridgeUSA at Berkeley, the nonpartisan organization that worked with College Republicans to invite Ann Coulter to the University of California at Berkeleys campus. Our organization hopes to create a future in which our campus and our country are venues for free and fair political discussion and debate from all sides. We stand for the preservation of spaces where political ideas can be shared and challenged without fear of violence.

To that end, we decided to help bring Coulter to Berkeley today to speak to a body of mainly liberal students on immigration. Unfortunately, threatened attacks from extremist groups forced the cancellation of this event. Lets be clear: Blame for the cancellation of Coulters speech does not rest solely on the shoulders of any individual. The administration, student groups including ours, external resistance groups and the media all made mistakes that need to be corrected. Fundamentally, though, the system of political dialogue and debate is broken, not just on this campus, but across the nation.

We formed our organization earlier this year after the infamous Milo Yiannopoulos event here, where an incendiary speaker, violent rioters and a divided nation combined to create the perfect storm of political controversy. The university canceled a speech in February by Yiannopoulos, a prominent conservative writer, after intense protests that led to a campuswide shelter in place order. That day, instigation and violence replaced mediation and conversation and we wanted to repair this breakdown in communication. Our goal since then has been to facilitate dialogue between political opposites, allowing everyone to engage with and understand opposing viewpoints. We have so far been successful in hosting forum sessions and debates on a series of different issues. Weve hosted five events in about two months. Many students were immediately interested in our mission, and our membership has expanded rapidly we have 40 officers and about 150 to 200 members.

Coulter was the choice of conservative groups on campus to represent their perspective in a larger campus debate about illegal immigration we were hosting. Liberal groups on campus had chosen Maria Echaveste, a former adviser to President Bill Clinton. She spoke on April 17 and answered questions from conservative students in the audience.

Coulters ideas have an audience, and though most members of our group dont agree with her, we recognize the following she draws. We also understand that many see her as an inflammatory figure with destructive beliefs that disqualify her from appearing at an institution of higher learning. But we believe the only productive way to fight views one sees as bad or dangerous is with better views. So we chose to get involved and include Coulter in our speaker series on immigration so students could hear, and actively challenge, her views. We planned for the event to be a debate-style Q&A with rebuttals to allow for a back-and-forth dialogue. Coulter would have fielded tough questions about her views from students in the audience, and we would have done our part to ensure that she would answer those questions in their entirety and give students the opportunity to respond. Rather than repeating the failures of Yiannopouloss event, we wanted to create a national example for what free discourse and the questioning of ideas should look like here at Berkeley, the home of the free speech movement 50 years ago.

Free speech isnt about provocation, violence, publicity stunts, selling books or testing limits. At their best, universities start and nurture conversations that advance dialogue and understanding further. Regrettably, the developments surrounding this event led it to fall out of line with our beliefs as an organization.

[Why free speech on campus is not as simple as everyone thinks]

National media coverage of Coulters visit mostly overlooked BridgeUSA at Berkeleys role and our plan for the event, instead reporting that the incident was a repeat of the Yiannopoulos fracas exactly what we set out to avoid. And as the tensions between student safety and free speech entered the justice system, Yiannopoulos himself announced that he would be organizing a free speech week on Sproul Plaza where he and his supporters would attack a new perceived enemy of free speech every day. It pains me to see our campus being used as a pulpit for bad actors, people whose goal is to elevate themselves by inciting violence, without a thought for the safety of students who live and attend school here.

Sproul Plaza is becoming a battleground, and the ones who are left to pick up the bill of consequences is the Berkeley student body, which is vilified every day in the press for destruction that outside groups are responsible for. Antifa and other black-bloc groups that are able to organize do so far beyond the perimeters of our campus, and they receive an insignificant amount of support from Berkeley students, if any. But in national news, all thats seen is violence and destruction being used to censor speech.

Whats disheartening to me is seeing the words free speech being used as a tool to garner headlines and publicity. The whole purpose behind the idea of free speech has been lost. Whats happening on our campus is no longer about advancing discourse anymore. Its no longer an attempt to reach a larger truth and understanding about policy issues so that better decisions can be made. Its just a furious chase to get in front of the news cameras and be trending on Twitter and Facebook.

Conservative groups, in their attempt to frame this complex series of events as a free speech battle by suing Berkeleys administration, have used the label of free speech as a tool for publicity. Our organization prides itself on the values of free inquiry and discourse, yet we understand the impossible trade-off that the university faces: the administration is caught between upholding its commitment to free speech and its responsibility for student safety.

[The right has its own version of political correctness. Its just as stifling.]

The administration attempted to work with us, to propose alternative dates this semester and next semester where a defensible venue would be available. In balancing the concerns of protecting students and allowing peaceful protest, they never backed down from their commitment to help us bring Coulter to campus. It is easy and expedient to blame the university in this situation, but that avoids the actual problem. The true issue here is not the way that the university handled this situation; rather, it is the fact that this trade-off between student safety and free speech even exists in the first place.

Its a scary situation when the university cannot perfectly perform its duty, when it cannot guarantee the safety of all speakers at all times in all places. Those who would threaten student safety and destroy our campus to silence speech they disagree with are culpable for the existence of this new trade-off. And violence and threats which restrict the free exchange of ideas constitute fascism under the banner of anti-fascism.

We challenge the Berkeley administration, the Berkeley College Republicans and Coulter to work collaboratively and address the cancellation of the event and the current political climate. These respective parties continue to affirm their commitment to free speech, but they have demonstrated minimal effort in speaking freely with one another. Civil discussions are necessary to progress our democracy and address pressing points of contention.

We can alleviate polarization if we come to the table to talk, but until then, there is no constructive way forward. Threatening violence does not change minds, and instigating controversy for publicity does not fix a broken system. We, as a community, have to recognize that there is a world outside of Berkeley: How can we promote what we believe if we are associated with images of violence? We need to act with the knowledge that everyone is watching.

We refuse to meet speech with violence and oppression. We refuse to invoke the right to free speech to inflame, attack and generate publicity. We refuse to accept the current status quo surrounding speech on university campuses across the country. Instead, we will continue to pursue our mission of creating environments in which students can engage with their peers as free thinkers, express their opinions without fear and have their beliefs, suppositions and prejudices challenged rather than dismissed. Only through these means can we begin to bridge the gap brought on by polarization and allow for a free exchange of political ideas.

Written with additional contributions bySean Vernon, editor of BridgeUSA at Berkeleys publication

Read more:

To fight hate speech, stop talking about it

What its like to be a college professor who supports Donald Trump

No, protesters who point out campus racism arent silencing anyone

Read the original post:
I invited Ann Coulter to speak at UC Berkeley. Heres why ...

Ann Coulter says she will not speak at Berkeley: ‘Its a sad …

The controversy over conservative commentator Ann Coulters planned appearance this week at UC Berkeley took another turn Wednesday when she and her sponsors pulled out even as campus police readied anyway for riot-like demonstrations.

Im so sorry for free speech [being] crushed by thugs, Coulter posted on Twitter in announcing that she had abandoned efforts to find a campus venue where she could speak Thursday.

Its sickening when a radical thuggish institution like Berkeley can so easily snuff out the cherished American right to free speech, she added.

Berkeley administrators and police countered that their first concern was safety in the face of increasingly violent demonstrations at the famously liberal university.

Coulter had been invited by two student groups to speak on immigration policy as a counterpoint to a Clinton administration advisor. The address became a campus-freedoms rallying point for conservative groups when administrators first canceled Coulters visit, then rescheduled it to an unpopular date.

But even without a high-profile headliner such as Coulter, UC Berkeley Police Capt. Alex Yao said, authorities expect extremists to arrive on campus to have violence against each other. He said students should expect a heavy police presence Thursday and a very, very low tolerance of violence.

Among those contemplating their own Berkeley events on Thursday were Proud Boys founder Gavin McInnes and Canadian alt-right blogger Lauren Southern, according to statements Southern made.

Administrators cited unspecified threats of violence in limiting Coulter to a daytime engagement off the main campus. The Berkeley campus and adjacent downtown has been the scene of three violent clashes since February between alt-right demonstrators and white nationalists on one side and anti-fascist and anarchist groups on the other.

Coulter had pledged to show up anyway, even contemplating an outdoor address. But she discarded that idea Wednesday in the face of continued threats, the universitys refusal to find her a building and the withdrawal of her sponsors.

The president of one student group, BridgeCal, said the escalating rhetoric surrounding what was intended as discourse contributed to the groups decision to rescind its invitation.

Ann herself is using this a little to her advantage to engage in the test of free speech, said Pranav Jandhyala. He said he found Coulters recent public comments unnecessarily provocative.

We cant endorse an event like that, Jandhyala said.

The other student host, Berkeley College Republicans, also withdrew its invitation but said the issue always had been about free speech.

The group and Coulters well-funded financial sponsor, the Virginia-based Young Americas Foundation, filed a federal free speech lawsuit Monday accusing the university of using security concerns as a guise to censor conservative viewpoints. College Republicans President Troy Worden said he would pursue the litigation.

The fact that we couldnt even get a speaker on campus, thats our primary concern, he said.

The College Republicans in February sought to host right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos, but the event was canceled when hundreds of demonstrators swarmed the venue including some in masks who tore down barricades and smashed windows.

The group also invited controversial writer David Horowitz to speak this month but withdrew the request, citing poor attendance expected at the time and location the university required.

The American Civil Liberties Union raised its own concerns Wednesday. National Legal Director David Cole said he was troubled by how threats of violence effectively silenced Coulter.

If the government gets to decide which speech counts as hate speech, the powers that be may later feel free to censor any speech they dont like, Cole said in a statement. For the future of our democracy, we must protect bigoted speech from government censorship.

On college campuses, that means that the best way to combat hateful speech is through counter-speech, vigorous and creative protest, and debate, not threats of violence or censorship.

UC Berkeley Chancellor Nicholas Dirks released a public statement that stressed the universitys commitment to free speech and attributed the risk of mayhem and free speech challenges to outside groups.

This is a university, not a battlefield, Dirks said. The strategies necessary to address these evolving threats are also evolving, but the simplistic view of some that our police department can simply step in and stop violent confrontations whenever they occur ignores reality.

Berkeley police have arrested 21 individuals and have warrants for an additional 11 suspected of being involved in the violent demonstrations in March and April, a spokesman said.

City Police Chief Andrew Greenwood said officers are dealing with combatants eager to fight, and any use of force might escalate the violence.

We are rightly expected to not get swept into the volatility of the crowd, he wrote in a report to the Berkeley City Council.

Coulter is still traveling to the Bay Area. She is scheduled to appear Friday at a sold-out fundraiser for the Republican Party of Stanislaus County.

Organizer Janice Keating said the party chose Coulter because of her ability to draw a crowd. Demonstrations were not expected, Keating said, but were prepared as best we can be.

The organization has hired private security to bolster the efforts of the Modesto Police Department.

Los Angeles Times staff writer Teresa Watanabe contributed to this report.

paige.stjohn@latimes.com

Twitter: @paigestjohn

ALSO:

Ann Coulter, free speech and UC Berkeley: How a talk became a political bombshell

Opinion: Berkeley has become the place where political extremists come to throw punches

Editorial: Let Ann Coulter speak

UPDATES:

7:35 p.m.: This article was updated with Coulters decision to cancel her appearance and a comment from the ACLU.

11:35 a.m.: This article was updated with details about another student group withdrawing its invitation to commentator Ann Coulter and comments from Janice Keating of the Republican Party of Stanislaus County.

10:45 a.m.: This article was updated with comments from Pranav Jandhyala, president of the student group BridgeCal.

10 a.m.: This article was updated with comments from UC Berkeley spokesman Dan Mogulof and UC Berkeley Chancellor Nicholas Dirks.

This article was originally published at 9:30 a.m.

Read more:
Ann Coulter says she will not speak at Berkeley: 'Its a sad ...

In Berkeley context, Ann Coulter is the liberal – Jackson Clarion Ledger

Rich Lowry, Syndicated columnist 5:35 p.m. CT April 30, 2017

Rich Lowry(Photo: Special to The Clarion-Ledger)

Because the California National Guard couldnt be mobilized in time, Ann Coulter had to withdraw from giving a speech at Berkeley.

If you take it seriously, thats the import of UC Berkeleys decision to do everything it could to keep the conservative provocateur from speaking on campus over safety concerns.

If somebody brings weapons, theres no way to block off the site, or to screen them, the chancellor of the university said of Coulters plan to go ahead and speak at an open-air forum after the school canceled a scheduled talk.

The administrator made it sound as if Coulter would have been about as safe at Berkeley as she would have been addressing a meeting of MS-13 and he might have been right.

We have entered a new, much less metaphorical phase of the campus-speech wars. Were beyond hissing, or disinviting. Were no longer talking about the hecklers veto, but the masked-thugs-who-will-burn-trash-cans-and-assault-you-and-your-entourage veto.

Coulter is a rhetorical bomb thrower, which is an entirely different thing than being a real bomb thrower. Coulter has never tried to shout down a speaker she doesnt like. She hasnt thrown rocks at cops. She isnt an arsonist. She offers up provocations that she gamely defends in almost any setting with arguments that people are free to accept, or reject, or attempt to correct.

In other words, in the Berkeley context, shes the liberal. She believes in the efficacy of reason and in the free exchanges of ideas. Her enemies do not.

Indeed, the budding fascism that progressives feared in the Trump years is upon us, although not in the form they expected. It is represented by the black-clad shock troops of the anti-fa movement who are violent, intolerant and easily could be mistaken for the street fighters of the extreme right in 1930s Europe. That they call themselves anti-fascist speaks to a colossal lack of self-awareness.

It is incumbent on all responsible progressives to reject this movement, and just as important the broader effort to suppress controversial speech. This is why former Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Deans comments about hate speech not being protected by the First Amendment were so alarming. In Deans defense, he had no idea what he was talking about, but he was effectively making himself the respectable voice of the rock throwers.

Deans view was that Berkeley is within its rights to make the decision that it puts their campus in danger if they have her there. This justification, advanced by the school itself, is profoundly wrongheaded.

It is an inherently discriminatory standard, since the Berkeley College Republicans arent given to smashing windows and throwing things when an extreme lefty shows up on campus, which is a near-daily occurrence.

It would deny Coulter something she has a right to do (speak her mind on the campus of a public university) in reaction to agitators doing things they dont have a right to do (destroy property, among other acts of mayhem).

It would suppress an intellectual threat, i.e., a dissenting viewpoint, and reward a physical threat. This is perverse.

For now there is a consensus in favor of free speech in the country that is especially entrenched in the judiciary. The anti-fa and other agitators arent going to change that anytime soon. But they could effectively make it too burdensome for certain speakers to show up on campus, and over time more Democrats like Dean could rationalize this fact by arguing that so-called hate speech doesnt deserve First Amendment protection.

So, it isnt enough for schools like UC Berkeley to say that they value free speech, yet do nothing to punish disrupters and throw up their hands at the task of providing security for controversial speakers. If everyone else gets safe space at UC Berkeley, Coulter deserves one. If the anti-fa are willing to attack free speech through illegal force, the authorities should be willing to defend it by lawful force.

Heck, if necessary, call out the National Guard.

Email Rich Lowry at comments.lowry@)nationalreview.com.

Read or Share this story: http://on.thec-l.com/2qmysaB

Continue reading here:
In Berkeley context, Ann Coulter is the liberal - Jackson Clarion Ledger

Berkeley students sue university for canceling Ann Coulter’s visit – New York Post


New York Post
Berkeley students sue university for canceling Ann Coulter's visit
New York Post
BERKELEY, Calif. Ann Coulter is now at the center of a civil rights lawsuit filed Monday against the University of California, Berkeley, by students who say the school is violating their right to free speech by canceling the conservative pundit's ...

and more »

Read this article:
Berkeley students sue university for canceling Ann Coulter's visit - New York Post

Ann Coulter controversy tests Berkeley’s free speech …

But walk around Cal Berkeley for a day and you won't find thugs. Many students will tell you they support Coulter's right to speak, even if they disagree with her. The university should have found a way to make it happen, they'll say.

Sitting under the 300-foot-high Campanile clock tower enjoying a sandwich, Harmanjit Sodhi, 20, told CNN that she was liberal growing up in Tracy, California. But Berkeley's leftism pushed her to the center.

Many of her classmates are quick to label someone a bigot or "sh**ty person" if they divert even slightly from core left-wing values, she said.

"I don't like the fact (Coulter's speech) was canceled because at the end of the day, just because she's a Republican or has views most students disagree with doesn't mean her views aren't valid," said the junior studying molecular and cellular biology.

At the same time, Sodhi, like many students and faculty, feels Coulter's speech was a publicity stunt, aimed at painting the nation's cradle of free speech as intolerant.

"Everybody's speaking, and nobody's listening," said junior Guutaa Regassa as he worked on his laptop in Sproul Plaza, the site of many free-speech battles in the 1960s. "These are ideas, but we're also human beings. I think people attack the human being when they need to attack the idea."

They don't call it "Bezerkeley" without reason. Students have gotten rowdy here for decades, and the school's history of protest and political activity has sparked tangible change across the nation -- especially in the realm of free speech.

"When something related to free speech happens here, it gets the attention of the national press," said Robert Price, the associate vice chancellor for research, who has been teaching at Berkeley since 1970.

As for the recent violence, Price and several Berkeley students believe that students were only minimally involved in the melees. They suspect hate groups and Bay Area anti-fascists used these events to wage violence against each other.

"Obviously, they did that because Berkeley's a symbol," Price said.

But the political science professor is disturbed by what he feels is an aversion to the free exchange of ideas, which flouts the victories for which so many in the free speech movement of the 1960s fought and sacrificed.

Students back then appreciated that universities were supposed to make them uncomfortable, he said. They engaged in heated debates in Sproul Plaza. Price called it a "feast of intellectual combat," and no topic was off limits. Even Communists could be found in the plaza arguing among themselves -- Maoism versus Stalinism and so on.

Knowing this history firsthand, Price finds it disturbing that some students today want safe spaces and trigger warnings to fend off speech they find objectionable.

"To say it violates the First Amendment is true, but the threat is larger than that. If (students) believe something strongly, that belief ought to be embedded in something they can defend intellectually, and you only get that if you're challenged," he said.

"If you're so psychologically weak that the expression of ideas is going to traumatize you, you shouldn't be at a university."

Price remembers being a graduate student in October 1964 when police converged on Sproul Plaza to arrest Jack Weinberg for violating the school's ban on political activity on campus.

Some, including Weinberg, actually mounted the police car's roof to deliver statements on free speech. The students remained in the plaza for 32 hours, until charges were dropped and Weinberg was released.

In a phone interview, Weinberg told CNN he felt the university was "ham-fisted" about the Coulter speech. He doesn't agree with Coulter, but he also doesn't agree with those who would retreat to safe spaces to avoid her message, nor with bullies "with no principles of their own" who would use her speech as an opportunity to engage in violence.

"My hope is she does not get prevented from speaking, and my hope is that thousands of people come out, just like during the free speech movement, and protest her message," he said Wednesday.

Luise Valentin, a senior from Copenhagen, Denmark, said the university is certainly not above debate. While she cheekily says UC Berkeley students "are very much for diversity and free speech as long as you agree with us," she says the recent violence is anything but typical.

She has a class with public policy professor Robert Reich, a Democrat and political commentator who served in the Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton administrations. After the most recent violence at Berkeley, Valentin said, Reich canceled his lecture for the day and instead engaged in a debate with former GOP Sen. Alan Simpson of Wyoming.

The purpose was "to show you could be open-minded and friendly with each other and still disagree," the 22-year-old said.

Many students say they aren't worried about classmates becoming violent if right-wing pundits deliver on promises to speak in Sproul Plaza. Ryan Kelley-Cahill, 19, a freshman from nearby Alameda, said he sees students civilly debating there every day over animal rights, foreign oil, Palestine and myriad other issues.

"The culture on campus, it's not like there are violent people going around trying to suppress people's views," the business and political science major said.

But those fringe elements -- the anti-fascists, the neo-Nazis -- concern some students who told CNN they think school administrators were trying to protect the campus by rescheduling Coulter's speech.

Jacob Slater-Chin, 24, a graduate student in multimedia, feels otherwise. Conservative views can be freely aired on campus, said Slater-Chin, adding that he was "kind of interested in what Ann had to say." He is particularly annoyed, he said, by the black-clad anti-fascists, who he couldn't differentiate from the hate groups fighting during the Yiannopoulos speech and Trump rally.

"They're kind of, ironically, being Nazis," he said. "It doesn't really help your argument when you're literally beating up people."

View post:
Ann Coulter controversy tests Berkeley's free speech ...