Berkeley has long been viewed as one of the most viewpoint-intolerant universities in the United States. Conservatives and those with opposing views are rarely invited and often face protests or cancellations. Some of us have long accused the Berkeley administrators and faculty of fostering this culture of intolerance. That culture was again on full display in the cancellation of an event with Jeffrey Dean, Chief Scientist at Google, in Jarvis Auditorium on Friday, May 1. The passive position taken by the campus police speaks volumes about why Berkeley is an academic echo chamber. The university reportedly maintained that it will take no action in preventing such disruptions absent violence. In adopting this position, the university effectively enables a heckler’s veto. The inexplicable position would leave the level of permitted speech to the mob at Berkeley.
This event generated overwhelming interest on campus, given the many programs focused on machine learning and AI. It could not have been more timely, and Dean could not be a better figure to facilitate substantive and civil discourse. It was organized by the Berkeley Forum, which is dedicated to intellectual exchange and free speech.
However, roughly twenty masked protesters entered the event with the intention of preventing others from hearing from Dean and discussing these issues. Soon after the event began, they reportedly disrupted it with megaphones and yelling. According to the Forum’s letter to university officials, “representatives from The Berkeley Forum, the College of Engineering, and Jelani Nelson, Chair of EECS, informed the protesters that they were not authorized to attend and asked them to leave. They refused.”
At that point, it should be a straightforward matter for campus security. In its student conduct directives, Berkeley repeatedly cites the First Amendment as binding and requires the university to allow opposing views. It is hardly an overwhelming statement of free speech values, but the university does state that “once a speaker has been invited by a student group, the campus is obligated and committed to acting reasonably to ensure that the speaker is able to safely and effectively address his or her audience, free from violence or disruption.”
Nevertheless, protesters have repeatedly succeeded in canceling events, and it is rare for any conservative or libertarian speaker to be invited on campus for such events. On this occasion, the Berkeley Forum spoke with Berkeley campus police to remove fewer than two dozen protesters. Here is what they said they were told:
“Prior to their entry, a Berkeley Forum member had informed UCPD escorts on scene that this was a ticketed event and that the protesters were not registered attendees. UCPD and campus security responded that, due to “free speech,” there was nothing that could be done to prevent the protesters from entering the private event. When we asked officers to intervene and restore order, we were told they would not act unless the protest turned violent.
They made no request that protesters stop or leave, and no attempt to identify them. After over 10 minutes of back-and-forth, during which the audience vocally expressed its support for Dr. Dean’s talk to continue, we were forced to cancel the event due to safety concerns.”
The university’s reported position is legally untenable. The university clearly has the authority to remove disruptive individuals at events. These protesters were not exercising free speech. They were preventing the exercise of free speech. They are entirely protected in conducting protests outside of the events. What they cannot do is disrupt or cancel an event.
On a practical basis, it is equally absurd. They were unticketed trespassers with bullhorns. It effectively enables a heckler’s veto, telling protesters that, so long as they do not resort to violence against speakers or other students, they will not be removed. That leaves organizers subject to the will of the mob. The message from Berkeley is BYOB, Bring Your Own Bullhorn.
The situation is reminiscent of the recent disruption at UCLA law school, where students drowned out a speaker with profanity and cellphone ringers. The school took no action against the readily identifiable law students while threatening others not to reveal their names. (The school later rescinded that threat, but has not taken any action against the administrator who made the threat).
In “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage,” I write about this passive-aggressive position of universities in shrugging off disruptive and obstructive conduct. Berkeley is fully aware that remaining passive, absent violent conduct, will fuel such disruptive protests.
The passivity of the Berkeley police is nothing new for conservatives, pro-life, and other advocates. From the University of North Carolina to UC Davis, police often stand by as mere onlookers, even in the face of property damage.
The university’s position here is clearly antithetical to the intellectual values that should govern such events. It is also legally incomprehensible, in my view. What is missing is not the authority to act, but the will to do so. The faculty and administrators of Berkeley have a choice to make: take a stand for intellectual diversity or yield, again, to orthodoxy and intolerance.
Jonathan Turley is a law professor and the best-selling author of “Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution.”
“. . . trespassers with bullhorns. It effectively enables a heckler’s veto, telling protesters that, so long as they do not resort to *violence* against speakers or other students, they will not be removed.” (JT, emphasis added)
The issue is not violence. The issue is the use of physical force to violate the speaker’s right to speak, the hosts’ right to hold the event, and the attendees’ right to hear the speaker. (Violence is merely an extreme form of physical force.)
As anyone with an obnoxious neighbor knows, noise is definitely a type of physical force.
Or it is justification for persecution and “Maximum Warfare Everywhere All the Time”. This is not the first time this strategy has been used. Example:
The Gleiwitz incident, or Gliwice incident, was a false flag attack on the radio station Sender Gleiwitz in Gleiwitz (then Germany and now Gliwice, Poland) staged by Nazi Germany on the night of 31 August 1939. Along with some two dozen similar incidents, the attack was manufactured by Germany as a casus belli to justify the invasion of Poland.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gleiwitz_incident
I betcha 99 percent of those who comment here Don’t believe judges are bribed on an enormous, massive, scale, routinely. Most of you think the courts are on the level and there’s no charge to play ball with the law.
Our courts are monitored, regulated and held wondrously accountable by they, themselves, by the lawyers and judges who divide multi-billion dollar settlements among themselves. Our judiciary is a crime syndicate all its own and it is the biggest criminal organization in world history. By Far
The key to success: discover what most people do, and do the opposite. The craving to fit-in, to be cool, to be seen as “bad” as hip, to dig it, in all their glorified terms, mean the same thing. Don’t be a dumb-ass. Groove wit it or be left out. That craving haunts most of us most our lives.
There should be a law.
“overwhelming interest”
Overwhelming? Is there any quantitative measure for that or is it just hyperbole for the tiny portion of students who had a passing interest in hearing from a guy whose goal is to ensure new grads won’t have any job to apply for?
That’s exactly what is driving the AI investment – the goal of making it so that anyone but senior workers are unemployable and cut off the path from new grads to junior to senior. For a short while it may boost the productivity of senior workers but, without the additional learning that less experienced workers do on the job under the watchful eye of the senior workers, there is no path to progress. In one decade, certainly less than two, the goal of the Google AI team is to make it possible for any company to fire all the knowledge workers and use AI to replace the effort.
The beauty is the the Law is an excellent target for AI. It can process millions of decisions and millions of laws and regurgitate what is has been exposed to.
“. . . whose goal is to ensure new grads won’t have any job to apply for?”
Luddites have been making the same disaster predictions ever since the car replaced the horse and buggy.
I was at the event. I was told that there were 225 ticketed attendees. They repeatedly made clear that they wanted to hear what Mr. Dean had to say. The University police were present but made no attempt to control the protesters. After the event was canceled because of the protesters I confronted the leader of the protest. While I was speaking to him he pulled down the mask he was wearing. He may have been a student but he certainly didn’t appear to be an undergrad.
OT
The recent opinion in Louisiana v. Callais– Voting rights act 1965 section 2 (b) last sentence, “provided” is plain as day.
Solid opinion
Wait until they get the birth right opinion.
Madmani must be deported for supporting anti-American, unconstitutional, and insane communist rubbish and for being immutably unable to assimilate as the antithesis of a freedom-loving American.
time for bedtime boomer. hes popular people like him and it looks like hes doing the job new yorkers want. so your opinion means nothing. go yell at some clouds and take your prevagen
In a way I think you’re right. But that’s the odd thing, isn’t it? He’s actively and purposefully driving wealth out of the city, demonstrably making the city poorer. Yet . . . that’s what people want. Not only in NYC, but in Chicago, Seattle, and any number of other blue city. People continually vote for misery over improvement. Very strange, these humans.
They like him.now, wait til middle class taxes skyrocket AND city services are cut.
I did not think hhey like him much now
ROFL
Mandani is a gift of left wing nut failure for the benefit of republicans
@Anon 7:51 PM
Please, do NOT use MY tax dollars to provide luxury transport of Zo Mamdani to his parents’ slave labor estate in Uganda, established with from pocket stuffing of Chinese capital and part of that “Chinese Plantation Foreman” caste that has enslaved that country. A free bus trip to the induced homelessness of his vision and actions under bridges in either Bronx or Queens would suffice.
He could be sending money to terrorists
—>crime
Obongo should have been imprisoned and deported for subversion of and insurrection against the Constitution and the U.S. government when he uttered these highly criminally treasonous words, “We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America,” in 2008.
The Deep Deep State should have been drawn and quartered en masse for installing a candidate who is, and will never be, eligible for the office of President because he is not a “natural born citizen” as defined (i.e. the only definition of the the phrase in the world) in Vattel’s The Law of Nations (1758), a work that was in the hands of the delegates to the Constitutional Convention in 1787.
The leftards can’t win an argument with any sort of reason so they are left trying to stop all the reasoning as it tends to confuse them anyway.
Where’s X? i expect him to defend violating others rights to speech if it’s for a commie cause.
I’m sure he’s working on a rational-sounding screed as we speak.
US Federal Judge Ho does not hold back, starting @4:00 – 10:00
Free Speech on Campus: Principles and Institutional Responsibility
Hon. James C. Ho, Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit
Prof. Eugene Volokh, Thomas M. Siebel Senior Fellow, The Hoover Institution, Stanford University; Gary T. Schwartz Distinguished Professor of Law Emeritus, UCLA School of Law
Prof. Jon Michaels, Professor of Law, UCLA Law
Yitzy Frankel, UCLA Law Alum ’25
https://www.youtube.com/live/GS6XjYvgN1E?t=63s
The group wanting to hear the lecture have a 1A claim.
The pro-Israel lickspittles and running dogs of Zion should be allowed to speak without the heckler’s veto. –
Sal Sar
Well, yes, and so should the pro-Palestine lackwhittles and crawling slugs of Islam be allowed to speak without the heckler’s veto.
And I dislike both.