Free Republic

In light of the ongoing violence on college campuses across the country, Middlebury College is instituting a “heckler’s veto” or temporary policy to shut down speakers whom they believe might be targets of threats or violence. A heckler’s veto is a term used when a government or institution of power shuts down someone’s First Amendment right of free speech to prevent or subvert potential violence that might be unleashed by a heckler in response to what they perceive as disagreeable speech. In layman’s terms, Middlebury is temporarily instituting an infringement on First Amendment rights. Stopping short of a flat-out ban...

Milo Yiannopoulos- Berkeley “Free Speech Week,” an event organized by student group the Berkeley Patriot and underwritten by MILO Inc., will occur as scheduled, running from September 24 to September 27 on the campus of UC Berkeley, despite attempts by the university to use bureaucratic maneuvers and strategic media leaks to disrupt the event and dissuade headline speakers from attending. The paperwork was filed on deadline, and MILO, Inc. transferred the required $65,758.76 to UC Berkeley to arrive at 8 AM ET Monday. Nevertheless, the University has not yet indicated it will grant access to Wheeler and Zellerbach. This move...

“This is a clear threat to public higher education.” A faculty letter addressed to the UC Berkeley campus and the Berkeley community at large is calling for a complete boycott of classes and campus activities during the upcoming “Free Speech Week," which will feature conservative speakers whose very names inspire college students to seek safe spaces and therapy. The Berkeley paper called The Daily Californian reports that the letter was co-written by seven faculty members, including Michael Cohen, a campus associate teaching professor of African American studies. The letter urges fellow faculty members to take three steps: cancel classes and...

The city of Berkeley was on alert. Barriers were erected to stop violent protesters. Bank of America boarded up windows. Police were authorized to use pepper spray if merited. Traumatized UC Berkeley students were offered counseling if needed. A campus crowd chanted, “Hey, hey, ho, ho, white supremacists have got to go.” And a large sign read, “We say no to white supremacist b-s.” What was causing this disturbance? Why the massive disruption? As tweeted by Tariq Nasheed, “Suspected white supremacist Ben Shapiro, who tries to mask his racist rhetoric by claiming to be jewish, is in Berkeley now #BenAtBerkeley.”...

The violence and destruction that accompanied Milo Yiannopoulos’s unsuccessful attempt to deliver a talk at UC’s Zellerbach Hall was thwarted last night at the same venue, thanks to the widely-reported expenditure of $600,000 on installing jersey barriers, and positioning large numbers of police, authorized to use pepper spray. The antifa warriors were not up for fight with superior forces. Inside Zellerbach Hall on Thursday night, conservative political commentator Ben Shapiro delivered his speech as planned to an engaged, respectful audience of about 600 to 700 people. Police were present inside the hall, but not highly visible, and no hecklers...

A new poll conducted by the University of California Berkeley reveals that a majority of California Democrats oppose the First Amendment right of freedom of speech and assembly, at least as it applies to extreme right-wing groups. A plurality (46%) of all Californians feels the same way.

Reed College students were ranked as the most liberal and the second most studious in Princeton Review’s survey of its top 382 liberal arts colleges. That compound of leftist politics and serious scholarship proved unstable last year as activists managed to cow the college’s administration, students and faculty alike. ...Demonstrators said Ms Valdivia was guilty of a variety of offences: she was a “race traitor” who upheld white supremacist principles by failing to oppose the Humanities syllabus. She was “anti-black” because she appropriated black slang by wearing a T-shirt that said, “Poetry is Lit”. She was an “ableist” because she...

The university that has proudly proclaimed itself to be the birthplace of the Free Speech Movement may also become its graveyard. "In a letter addressed to the UC Berkeley campus and the larger Berkeley community, 76 faculty members from various departments have called for a complete boycott of classes and campus activities during the so-called 'Free Speech Week' to be held on campus September 24-27," Hank Reichman writes in the Academe blog maintained by the American Association of University Professors (AAUP). "The week is sponsored by the Berkeley Patriot, a conservative student newspaper, and includes 'Feminism Awareness Day' and a...

In this cradle of the free speech movement, from the very campus where the First Amendment has been tested time and again, a new poll from UC Berkeley shows California voters are split over the delicate question of whether white nationalist groups should be allowed to demonstrate.

“The University cannot yet confirm exactly when or if they will be here, nor can it confirm a list of speakers," a UC Berkeley spokesperson said.Confusion is brewing at the University of California, Berkeley — once again about planned speeches by a number of controversial right-wing commentators. On Tuesday, a statement issued by MILO, Inc., a nonprofit headed by former Breitbart News editor Milo Yiannopoulos, began making the rounds on the Internet. It confirmed that former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon will attend Free Speech Week, organized by student group, Berkeley Patriot, between Sept. 24 and 27. Ann Coulter...

Later this month, conservative pundit Ben Shapiro will be landing at Berkeley, an event which is apparently being treated by the locals as some sort of Category Five Speechstorm. We already learned that the school is offering special counseling sessions for traumatized locals, and security concerns “forced them” to initially only sell half the tickets for the auditorium where Ben will be speaking.But you can’t be too careful in the face of a natural disaster like someone showing to, er… talk. Inside of a venue where only people who are willing to pay for tickets will be able to...

There has been a lot of buildup ahead of Ben Shapiro‘s speaking engagement at UC Berkeley. Between the university initially blocking him from its campus and its efforts to limit the crowd size, it’s becoming quite the anticipated event.

U.S. Rep. Anthony Brown (D-Md.) announced he will introduce a bill to limit free speech or “hate speech” at universities and colleges and force the schools to report hate crimes to local law enforcement. His logic behind the bill is to require universities to demonstrate they have programs in place that will define for students “what is acceptable speech and what is not acceptable speech.” Brown said funding will be set aside in a grant for institutions unable to secure the resources to create the programs.

Democratic Rep. Anthony Brown reportedly plans to introduce a bill that would require universities and colleges to define “acceptable speech” on campus. The Maryland congressman announced the plans during a speech last week, according to The Diamondback, the University of Maryland’s student newspaper. Brown reportedly said he wants colleges to demonstrate they have initiatives that define to students "what is acceptable speech and what is not acceptable speech.” Further, the bill reportedly would offer grant money to create these programs while pushing universities to report hate crimes. The proposal comes as campuses across the country have been accused of curbing...

Back in January of 2016, I sent a letter to UNC-Wilmington President Jose Sartarelli, which was copied to all 16 members of the Board of Trustees. I later published the same letter on Townhall.com. In my letter, which you can read here, I accused the university of having at least two policies that clearly violated the First Amendment. I then asked the administration to work with the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) to do an audit of our policies and then revise them towards the goal of attaining a coveted green light rating from FIRE. For those not...

Google, Facebook and the rest wield more power than most governments. The secular Left and the proponents of Islamic blasphemy laws have a new issue on which they are making common cause: the quest to destroy the freedom of speech, the cornerstone of our democracy. After Charlottesville, the Left sees its chance to crush all dissent, and given its alliance with Islamic supremacists, this means the implementation in the West of prohibitions on criticism of Islam, including counterterror analysis of the motivating ideology of jihad terrorists. This anti-free speech initiative, if it succeeds, will destroy free society, which cannot exist...

Liberalism, in its classic sense of a free society based on individual rights, intellectual pluralism, and democratic government, is in peril—as numerous voices have warned over the past two years. The common assumption is that the illiberal tide comes from the right: the xenophobic populism, nationalism, and authoritarianism represented by Donald Trump in the United States and figures like French National Front leader Marine Le Pen and Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán in Europe. Recent events in Charlottesville, where a far-right rally featured Nazi flags and anti-Semitic chants, were a stark illustration of this resurgence of reactionary forces — all...

The war on truth has reached a fever pitch as Google has made it their mission to annihilate the independent media. ... Google has announced they will be doubling down on their ‘Orwellian’ practice of making stories disappear from their monopolistic search engine.

Related Posts Conservative author Ann Coulter will join Milo Yiannopoulos during his “Free Speech Week” at UC Berkeley next month. Yiannopoulos, a controversial right-wing speaker, was invited back to campus by a campus conservative newspaper, the Berkeley Patriot. This comes after his previous event, hosted by Berkeley College Republicans, was canceled Feb. 1 because of the violent protest that erupted on Sproul Plaza. Coulter, who was also invited to speak on campus by BCR in April, will be visiting campus as well after her event was postponed and eventually canceled because of security disagreements between BCR and the campus administration....

As a student journalist, I value our first amendment right to free speech. But wearing a ‘Make America Great Again’ (MAGA) hat on the campus of Howard University, a historically black college, is not exercising your right to free speech. It is downright ignorant and disrespectful. The average American with half a brain would not think twice about wearing memorabilia that shows support for someone who provokes hate and racism on the campus of a university that is devoted to serving a people that has been historically oppressed. However, that is exactly what two high school students did. Let’s back...