EDITORIAL: UC Berkeley coddling campus authoritarians

Another week, another great leap backward for diversity of thought on the college campus. And once again, it’s at the so-called birthplace of the Free Speech Movement, the University of California, Berkeley.

Conservative commentator Ann Coulter was scheduled to speak at the Berkeley campus on Thursday night. But on April 19, university officials canceled the event, citing security concerns on a campus that has seen protests turn into unruly chaos in recent months. The “security” ruse is the latest excuse employed by college administrators whose true motivations are to aid and abet the campus authoritarians.

An undeterred Ms. Coulter said she would show up and speak anyway. That got UC Berkeley to relent and offer her a “secure” venue on May 2, but only if she agreed to a number of conditions that the university never imposes on leftist guests. Furthermore, that date falls during the dead week between the end of the semester and finals week, so there are no classes on campus and fewer students around.

Ms. Coulter told Berkeley officials to go pound sand and said she’d be there on April 27, as scheduled.

In the week leading up to the speech, the Berkeley College Republicans and the local chapter of the Young America’s Foundation filed suit against the university. But Ms. Coulter eventually agreed to cancel her talk.

Let’s be clear: The primary perpetrators of campus unrest are not conservative or libertarian speakers and the groups that invite them. One of the ringleaders is Antifa, an outfit purporting to represent anti-fascism that is clearly confused about the definition of fascism. So petrified are its members of debate and free speech that they routinely try to shut down — often through violent means — discourse they finds objective. Such behavior would warm the cockles of Stalin and Mao.

Unfortunately, even some moderate liberals now exhibit totalitarian tendencies in this regard. Howard Dean, former head of the Democratic National Committee and former governor of Vermont, is among the misguided who defend the treatment of Ms. Coulter and define “hate speech” as anything they disagree with. The blogger Ace of Spades perhaps put it best: “Remember, for Dean and his ilk, ‘our violence is free speech, but your free speech is violence’ is sound, progressive legal theory.”

UC Berkeley administrators would do a lot toward rebuilding the campus’s faltering reputation by exhibiting some intestinal fortitude and making it clear that the campus will not tolerate violence — that any of these young, masked fascists who engage in such tactics will be expelled, jailed and prosecuted.