https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2017/04/19/berkeley-cancels-ann-coulter-speech-over-fears-of-more-violent-protests/
After riots and violent protests in and around their campus during the past three months, officials at the University of California at Berkeley said Wednesday that the school is canceling a planned speech by conservative firebrand Ann Coulter because of safety concerns.
In a letter to a campus Republican group that invited Coulter to speak, university officials said that they made the decision to cancel Coulter’s appearance after assessing the violence that flared on campus in February, when the same college Republican group invited right-wing provocateur and Breitbart editor Milo Yiannopoulos to speak.
The violence and protests caused by Yiannopoulos’s invitation garnered national attention and forced officials to put the campus on lockdown. And after the university canceled the Yiannopoulos’s talk, President Trump criticized the school and threatened in a tweet to pull federal funds from UC-Berkeley.
If U.C. Berkeley does not allow free speech and practices violence on innocent people with a different point of view – NO FEDERAL FUNDS?
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 2, 2017
The decisions by UC-Berkeley to cancel both events involving high-profile Republicans are especially notable given the campus’s role during the 1960s and 1970s as the birthplace of the Free Speech Movement and its long tradition of social protest.
Rather than expecting these students not to act like animals and punishing the ones who do, easier to just cave and squelch any voice that might trigger them. This is beyond pathetic.
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