The cancellation Wednesday of a speech by right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos at UC Berkeley was, according to a university spokesman, “not a proud night for this campus, the home of the free speech movement.”That’s putting it mildly. Even if the cancellation was justified by concerns about public safety after an outbreak of violence and property destruction, the fact that Yiannopoulos was prevented from speaking to a willing audience of campus Republicans should make supporters of free speech shiver. Berkeley does not allow free speech and practices violence on innocent people with a different point of view — NO FEDERAL FUNDS?”That would be a ludicrous overreaction even if it were true that the university had been on the wrong side of the issue. Yet it’s also true that, on colleges campuses and elsewhere, some “progressive” voices do call for the stifling of speech they don’t approve of. A leaflet circulated at the Berkeley protest said Yiannopoulos has “no right to speak at Cal or anywhere else” because he’s a “tool of Trump’s possessive fascist government."

Source: Los Angeles Times February 03, 2017 13:03 UTC