On February 1, the University of California, Berkeley failed its student body. In the aftermath of the political showdown between Milo Yiannopoulos — a provocateur and self-proclaimed “most fabulous supervillain on the internet” — and the students of UC Berkeley, public discourse revolved around freedom of speech and tolerance.
The following day President Trump took to social media and threatened the university, “If U.C. Berkeley does not allow free speech and practices violence on innocent people with a different point of view — NO FEDERAL FUNDS?” Jonathan Zimmerman, a professor of education at my current graduate institution (the University of Pennsylvania) penned an article for the New York Daily News, where he called out Berkeley students and accused them of playing “judge and jury of acceptable speech.”
Let us be clear: The night was full of controversy; however, there was no infringement on Yiannopoulos’ freedom of speech. In fact, this couldn’t be anything further from the truth. Campus officials worked closely with the Berkeley College Republicans to ensure that Yiannopoulos’ right to speak would be protected. What protestors did that night was not infringe on his First Amendment rights, but they disrupted his platform. They used their right to protest to obstruct the vessel by which Yiannopoulos’ intended to deliver his free speech, and this by all means is fair. The true violation on that day came at the hands of UC Berkeley’s administration when they failed to honor their commitment to safeguard the institution’s most vulnerable students.
On UC Berkeley’s diversity website, where the faces of many underrepresented students are displayed throughout, it states, “Our mission is to create a campus where all Berkeley students, faculty, and staff feel respected, supported, and valued.”
By and large, this mission is the university signing a social contract, committing to fostering a campus climate that ensures that all students feel safe. By agreeing to allow a political agitator to speak on campus, someone who has a history of singling out and mocking transgender students amidst his speeches, is in breach of this contract.
Days prior to his talk, rumors of Yiannopoulos’ eagerness to out undocumented students circulated the Berkeley community after his alt-right now-former employer, Breitbart, published an article detailing his new campaign against sanctuary campuses. Given this information, UC Berkeley had ample opportunity to cancel his speaking event and shield their students from political and emotional violence, and they failed to do so.
Instead of cancelling Yiannopoulos’ speaking engagement, campus officials, on the first day of Black History Month, shut down the Multicultural Community Center, Cesar E. Chavez Student Center, and the Centers for Educational Equity and Excellence, in preparation for his speech. These spaces house resources that are critical to the survival of underrepresented students, as well as for students who hold marginalized identities. At the expense of these students, and for the sake of upholding Yiannopoulos’ First Amendment rights, UC Berkeley effectively shut down a conglomerate of safe spaces in favor of a controversial speaker who uses violent rhetoric to attack students’ race, citizenship status, gender, sexuality, and religion.
