Focus THE CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION Dealing With Controversial Speakers on Campus As a Chronicle of Higher Education individual subscriber, you receive premium, unrestricted access to the entire Chronicle Focus collection. Curated by our newsroom, these booklets compile the most popular and relevant higher-education news to provide you with in-depth looks at topics affecting campuses today. The Chronicle Focus collection explores student alcohol abuse, racial tension on campuses, and other emerging trends that have a significant impact on higher education. ©2017 by The Chronicle of Higher Education Inc. All rights reserved. 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This collection gives an overview of how college leaders, and their Ccampus communities, have responded to speakers with unpopular messages. Mayhem at Berkeley Hardens New A White Supremacist Comes to 4 Battle Lines on Free Speech 17 Auburn Masked protesters shut down an appearance, The university tried to block Richard Spencer’s triggering fresh debate. speech. A judge said it could not. Trump Can’t Cut Off Berkeley’s Funds by In Renting Out Space, Do Colleges 7 Himself. His Threat Still Raised Alarm. 20 Invite Trouble? Universities are taking note that they need to Policies that let outsiders stage events led to tread carefully in free-speech controversies. unwelcome visits on two campuses. At Berkeley, a Speaker’s Cancellation A Student Questions the Suppression 10 Spurs New Battles Over Free Speech 22 of Conservative Campus Speakers Ann Coulter’s decision not to appear prompted Zachary Wood wants to ensure that their voices a new round of recriminations on the campus. are heard at Williams College. A Scuffle and a Professor’s Injury Make Boos and Protests Mark Betsy DeVos’s 12 Middlebury a Free-Speech Flashpoint 26 Speech at Bethune-Cookman “We failed to live up to our values,” the When the secretary’s visit finally occurred, college’s president said after the incident. the expected commotion ensued. What Could Middlebury Have Done to Intimidation Is the New Normal 15 Avoid a Free-Speech Fracas? 28 on Campus Despite careful preparations, the event with From now on, any speaker whose views spark Charles A. Murray ended in an ugly fashion. a protest is at risk of a beating. Cover Illustration by James Yang Cover photo by Eric Thayer, The New York Times 22 CAMPUS VIOLENCE THE CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION / OCTOBER 2016 ©2017 THE CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION INC. BROOKE ANDERSON Black-clad protesters at the U. of California at Berkeley shut down a far-right speaker’s campus appearance and placed the California flagship once again at the center of a debate over free expression. Mayhem at Berkeley Hardens New Battle Lines on Free Speech By BETH MCMURTRIE ore than 50 years ago, the Uni- administration. versity of California at Berkeley Echoes of those early conflicts appeared this became the birthplace of the free- week following violent protests against a contro- speech movement. Thousands of versial speaker known for his anti-immigration students protested restrictions on and anti-feminist rhetoric. Berkeley once again be- Mpolitical activity on campus, the university relent- came the center of a free-speech debate, this one ed, and the state’s future governor, Ronald Rea- framed as a conflict between the right to free ex- gan, railed against disruptive students and a weak pression and an imperative to fight hate speech. 4 CONTROVERSIAL SPEAKERS ON CAMPUS THE CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION / MAY 2017 As dozens of protesters smashed windows and lished an article titled “The Night Berkeley Be- started fires Wednesday night to stop Milo Yian- trayed the Free Speech Movement,” finding paral- nopoulos, a Breitbart editor who has been tour- lels between the plight of conservatives today and ing college campuses, from taking the stage inside Berkeley activists in the 1960s. Berkeley’s student union, the chaos was broadcast Angus Johnston, a historian of student activism on national news and lit up social media. President who teaches at the City University of New York’s Trump weighed in on Twitter early the next morn- Hostos Community College, sees parallels, too, but ing: in a different way. The anger that protesters ex- pressed, he says, “is a reflection of the fact that the political system is broken.” Mr. Yiannopoulos, he notes, has been touring college campuses and inciting protests for months. But now that Donald J. Trump is president and Steve Bannon, the former head of Breitbart News, is his chief strategist, Mr. Yiannopoulos “is essen- tially one handshake away from the presidency,” Mr. Johnston says. “So his schtick resonates very differently.” Mr. Johnston also thinks free-speech advocates on the right have whitewashed the 1960s’ pro- The Berkeley administration, which had re- tests. When the police attempted to arrest a Berke- peatedly resisted requests from students and pro- ley student for handing out civil-rights literature fessors to ban Mr. Yiannopoulos, was quick to on campus in 1964, thousands of fellow students respond with a news release condemning the vi- staged a massive sit-in, preventing the police car olence and pointing out that the campus “was in- from moving. vaded by more than 100 armed individuals clad in “Mario Savio, the hero of the free-speech move- masks and dark uniforms who utilized paramili- ment, said in his most famous speech that there tary tactics” to shut down the event. comes a time when the operation of the system In other words, they were separate from the makes you so sick at heart you have to put your 1,500 students who the university said had gath- body on the gears of the machine,” said Mr. John- ered peacefully to protest Mr. Yiannopoulos’s mes- ston. “I don’t think that principle is such a huge sage. distance away from what we saw last night.” “This is part of what’s called the black bloc group,” said Dan Mogulof, a university spokesman, naming an anarchist group that has disrupted peaceful protests in the Bay Area and elsewhere with violence. “They came armed. They came with “A lot of protesters a clear plan to disrupt. We have no evidence to suggest that any of them were our students.” perceive, not unfairly, A number of eyewitnesses supported that con- clusion, he said, noting that many of the violent that that cry of free protesters seemed not to know their way around campus or how to get out. The police have made at least one arrest and are reviewing video to identify speech is far more other suspects. On social media and elsewhere, however, the often raised against narrative of the radical Berkeley student domi- nated. The Heritage Foundation, the conservative think tank, tweeted out adjacent photos: “1964: them than in support Berkeley students march to demand free speech. 2017: Berkeley students riot to demand free speech of them.” be denied.” Young Americans for Liberty, a con- servative student organization, issued a news re- lease claiming that 1,500 protesters threw smoke bombs, damaged property, and started fires, prov- The right has essentially flipped the free-speech ing, the group said, that “even the most liberal, argument, Mr. Johnston says. “A lot of protesters open-minded campuses in our country harbor in- perceive, not unfairly, that that cry of free speech tolerance for those that disagree with them.” is far more often raised against them than in sup- Breitbart News, which has backed Mr. Yian- port of them.” nopoulos’s “Dangerous Faggot” campus tour, pub- Donald P. Moynihan, a professor of public af- MAY 2017 / THE CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION CONTROVERSIAL SPEAKERS ON CAMPUS 5 fairs at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, Mr. Yiannopoulos’s actions should not be consid- is one of many who think the violent protesters ered protected speech, “I deplore the violent tac- played into the hands of conservatives looking to tics of yesterday and so do the overwhelming ma- make the case that colleges are bastions of liber- jority of students and faculty at UC Berkeley.” al intolerance. “Their next argument is that they need to do something to fix this problem,” he said. HIJACKED BY ANARCHISTS RED MEAT FOR REAGAN Avinash Kunnath, a 2010 Berkeley graduate who writes about sports on California Golden When he entered the governor’s race in 1966, Blogs, wrote a post on Thursday that also coun- Mr. Reagan made the Berkeley protests a center- tered the narrative that students had incited the piece of his campaign. “Will we allow a great uni- violence. Anarchists, a familiar presence in the versity to be brought to its knees by a noisy dissi- area, were to blame, he said, yet that was not the dent minority?” he asked. “Will we meet their neu- message aired publicly. “People have taken advan- rotic vulgarities with vacillation and weakness?” tage of the Berkeley spirit of free speech to use it to Within weeks of his election, he helped ensure that advance their own agenda for a national audience,” Clark Kerr, president of the University of Califor- he wrote.