Free Speech Is Who We Are”: the University of California and the Struggle to Preserve Berkeley’S Free Speech Tradition in the Trump Era

“FREE SPEECH IS WHO WE ARE”: THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AND THE STRUGGLE TO PRESERVE BERKELEY’S FREE SPEECH TRADITION IN THE TRUMP ERA By Robert Cohen, NYU It is no accident that the most serious free speech crisis at UC Most commentators on that riot noted the irony that this massive Berkeley in more than a half century exploded less than two free speech violation occurred at UC Berkeley since Cal was weeks after the start of the Trump presidency. I am referring, of the birthplace of the most famous and victorious student-led course, to the disgraceful antifa riot on the night of February struggle for free speech in all of American history, the Berkeley 1, 2017 that did more than $100,000 in property damage to the Free Speech Movement of 1964, which established the principle Berkeley student union building, preventing the bigoted, foul that the university must not restrict the political content of mouthed, far right provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos from speaking speech or advocacy on campus. Yes, that Berkeley was the site there.1 Lefsts, liberals, and conservatives in Berkeley who see of an anti-free speech riot was indeed ironic. But it is simplistic eye to eye on little else do agree that this violence wrought by a and inaccurate to read the anti-Yiannopoulos riot – as it was coordinated force of some 150 club-wielding, masked, black clad by Trump, Fox News and rightwing critics both in Berkeley and antifas, would not have even been imaginable had it not been for nationally – as evidence that UC Berkeley had committed a free the extreme political polarization unleashed by Trump.2 speech violation, abandoning its vaunted free speech tradition.7 The riotous free speech violation, after all, had been caused Donald Trump’s openly nativist, Islamophobic, white nationalist by violent and mostly non-student militants who invaded the presidential campaign, his authoritarian political style, and his campus not by the university itself (though the rioters were late January ban on Muslim immigrants emboldened the far right, masked, the campus police and other eyewitnesses noted that legitimated the alt right, sending the far Left into a panic. This most did not know their way around the Berkeley campus and left antifa acting as if America was in its Germany 1933 moment, neither looked nor acted like students or members of the campus on the verge of going fascist. And so “by any means necessary” community. Only 1 or 2 out of the 150 or so rioters have been fascistic speakers like Yiannopoulos (linked to Trump via the identifed as Cal students).8 So the Berkeley-bashing response white nationalist alt right Breitbart News publication where of right wingers to the riot, epitomized by Donald Trump’s Yiannopoulos had been a protégé of Steve Bannon, Trump’s demagogic tweet suggesting that, since UC Berkeley did not campaign manager and strategist), had to be denied a platform support free speech and promoted violence against dissenters, its from which to spread hatred and bigotry. All the more so since it federal funds should be cut of, was a blatant case of blaming (and was rumored that Yiannopoulos intended to out undocumented threatening!) the victim.9 immigrant students at Berkeley just as he had harassed and mocked from the podium a transgender student at the University In fact, the UC Berkeley administration consistently stood of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, whose image he had projected in the up for free speech, refusing to accede to demands from the lecture hall and on Breitbart’s website.3 This was a moment when Left that Yiannopoulos’ speech be cancelled. Had it not been the far left and far right fed of each other in their frenzied politics for the riot, which UC Berkeley’s administration condemned, of hatred and demonization as the bigoted and newly empowered the speech would have taken place.10 It was only after the riot Trump administration set of an almost incredible wave of erupted and public safety was endangered that UC Berkeley political tension and turmoil. reluctantly cancelled the event. Actually, the administration of UC Berkeley Chancellor Nicholas Dirks (which ended at the Of course campus free speech disputes and violations did not close of the 2017 academic year) and his successor Carol Christ begin with Trump; they have been present throughout the history (whose chancellorship began at the start of the 2017-18 academic of American higher education. For much of the 20th century these year) would make the preservation of Berkeley’s free speech violations were visited primarily upon the Left by anti-radical tradition a top priority, spending millions of dollars for security university and college administrators.4 It has only been since the (despite Cal’s budget crisis and defcit) to ensure that right wing closing decades of the 20th century that such violations began speakers could be heard on campus and that the February riot impacting those on the right, who ran afoul of overly broad (and was not repeated. Indeed, Christ declared that her frst year as unconstitutional) campus speech codes, with their hate speech chancellor would be “Free Speech Year” at Berkeley –complete restrictions.5 But even these violations were almost exclusively with forums on campus free speech controversies, and speakers non-violent and on individual campuses small scale, compared to from all parts of the political spectrum -- because free speech was the major riot that disrupted Yiannoupolos’ speaking engagement “who we are” at Berkeley.11 This deep commitment to free speech at Berkeley last year at the dawn of the Trump era.6 and willingness to foot astronomical bills for security to protect unpopular speakers made it possible not only for Yiannopoulos to experience a peaceful return to Berkeley in fall 2017, but also 2019 Selected Research 1 for other controversial rightwing speakers, including Ann Coulter made him such an object of scorn among the antifa rioters (since and Ben Shapiro, to be accommodated for campus speaking in their view he had provided a platform of the hateful fascist engagements so long as they agreed to speak at a time and speaker whose event they would riot to shut down) that campus location where campus police could assure that their speaking police – concerned about his safety – advised him not to go to events could occur safely (which Shapiro did and Coulter did Sproul Plaza, where he could easily have been a target for physical not).12 attack. And once the rioters had forced the shutting down of the Yiannopoulos speech, reports came in to the police that Much as the political polarization of the Trump era makes it a they were planning to besiege Chancellor Dirks’s residence on challenge to protect the free speech tradition at Berkeley, it also campus – leading the police to suggest he be ready to evacuate makes it difcult to reach a consensus across the ideological his residence. spectrum on the state of that free speech tradition. Indeed, after word of that threat from the rioters, police came to As intimated earlier, if you think about it objectively, the fact that Dirks’ residence in case the evacuation was necessary. It was only in the frst year of the Trump era UC Berkeley administrations because the rioters (as mostly non-students) were unfamiliar with spent millions of dollars on security, brought in an army of police, the campus and so did not know where the chancellor’s home and endured denunciation from the far Left all to enable right --University House – was located that such a siege was avoided, wing speakers to hold public events on the Berkeley campus, and they diverted to California Hall. There the presence of the you’d have to say the university’s free speech tradition is alive, Oakland Police, who UC had been called in under mutual aid, well, and upheld vigorously by UC’s leadership.13 Yet this is not the fnally drove the rioters from the campus. way Trump supporters and others on the right see things. Hostile to the liberal university, which they view as a site of political Having been so demonized and threatened by these violent correctness and leftwing indoctrination, they see UC Berkeley as militants for defending free speech, it was positively surreal for complicit with those on the far Left who seek to suppress right Dirks the next morning to read that tweet of the President of the wing speech on campus.14 United States charging the university Dirks led with repressing free speech and instigating violence for such repression. Trump’s Perhaps the most striking example of this Berkeley-bashing tweet read: “If U.C. Berkeley does not allow free speech and narrative was the right wing media suggestion in February 2017 practices violence on innocent people with a diferent point of that Berkeley ofcials coddled the anti- Yiannopoulos rioters. view – NO FEDERAL FUNDS?”16 For Dirks that absurdly inaccurate The rightwing media popularized the claim that during the riot and slanderous Trump tweet, as well as the Fox News broadcast’s the Berkeley campus police were issued a “stand down” order, equally misleading condemnation of the university for “repressing and supposedly cowered in the student union building rather conservative thought,” constituted “a kind of window on to than go out on the plaza to confront and arrest the rioters. This our current political reality, which is that truth is not relevant… claim, which provoked a food of irate e-mails to UC Berkeley But it was stark, and it was quick, and it was dramatic.”17 Nils Campus Police Chief Margo Bennett, was not merely untrue, but Gilman, Dirks’s chief of staf, was also appalled at the right wing ludicrous.

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