Education

Cal Berkeley Blocks ANOTHER Conservative Speaker

Creative Commons/Gage Skidmore, YouTube screenshot/ABC News

Font Size:

Officials at the University of California, Berkeley have determined that they simply cannot find a suitable campus venue to accommodate a speech by popular conservative writer Ben Shapiro — two months from now.

The Berkeley College Republicans announced plans for Shapiro to speak on the public campus on Sept. 14. That date will occur 56 days from now, on a Thursday.

The Republican student group has requested a space which can hold at least 500 people for the speech by Shapiro, a 33-year-old Harvard Law School graduate and a prolific political commentator.

On Wednesday, UC Berkeley’s dean of students, Joseph Greenwell, and a student organization coordinator Millicent Morris Chaney informed Berkeley College Republicans that they are “unable to identify an available campus venue,” according to a press release from Young America’s Foundation, a national conservative group.

The problem, the administrators explain in a letter, is that events — at least events featuring conservative speakers — must be “held at a time and location that allow for the provision of any required security measures.” Also, campus police “might rule out certain hours for the event” (which likely means any time in the evening, when more people could attend).

Morris Chaney swore up and down that she put forth “extensive efforts” in her sad, failed attempt to locate a 500-seat room on the 1,232-acre, 27,496-student, taxpayer-funded campus.

Shapiro isn’t buying it.

“Using ridiculous pretexts to keep conservatives from speaking is unsurprising but disappointing,” he said, according to Young America’s Foundation.

“We’ll find a way to get this event done, and UC Berkeley has a moral and legal obligation to ensure we do so.”

UC Berkeley officials insist that they are not trying to censor Shapiro or the Berkeley College Republicans through the use of bureaucratic obstacles, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

School officials point to the part of the letter from Greenwell and Morris Chaney which reads: “Mr. Shapiro is welcome on our campus.”

The administrators say they may be able to find a 500-person space on a different date, or a smaller space on Sept. 14.

UC Berkeley spokesman Dan Mogulof said school administrators want to meet with members of the Berkeley College Republicans to determine a time and a place for Shapiro’s speech, they say.

“The way to do this is not by press release,” Mogulof told the Chronicle, “but by sitting down together.”

In its press release, Young America’s Foundation notes the impressive double standard achieved by UC Berkeley officials.

“An endless stream of liberal speakers continue to be granted opportunities to speak, unobstructed by time, place, or manner restrictions while conservatives are continually treated unequally, and repeatedly relegated to the margins of campus activity,” the conservative group says.

“This attempt to block Ben Shapiro is the University of California, Berkeley’s third instance of shredding the First and Fourteenth Amendment rights of conservative students who’ve tried to host YAF speakers on their campus,” the group notes.

The other two speakers were former Breitbart editor Milo Yiannopoulos and conservative author Ann Coulter.

Young America’s Foundation and the Berkeley College Republicans are suing UC Berkeley because, they say, administrators have unduly burdened conservative speakers with time and place restrictions — or just canceled their speeches altogether.  (RELATED: Berkeley Sued For Cancelling Ann Coulter’s Speech)

In February, a left-wing group called the Alliance for Global Justice helped organize the violent shutdown of a speech by Yiannopoulos at Cal Berkeley. The Alliance for Global Justice is backed by a progressive charity that is in turn funded by George Soros, a major labor union and several large companies. (RELATED: Look Who Funded The Group Behind The Call To Arms At Milo’s Berkeley Event)

Prior to the riot staged over Yiannopoulos, the UC Berkeley student newspaper published an op-ed inviting students to show up to protest. (RELATED: Cal Berkeley Student Newspaper PROMOTED Protest-Turned-Riot The Day Before Milo Event)

Far-left protesters and far-right protesters staged hateful, occasionally violent battles in April after Cal Berkeley officials canceled Coulter’s speech.

A resident of Oakland, Kiara Robles, attempted to attend the Yiannopoulos speech at UC Berkeley but found herself being pepper-sprayed by a radical leftist protester instead. Robles has filed a $23 million federal lawsuit against the public school — and the Berkeley Police Department, and left-wing billionaire George Soros, and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and many others. (RELATED: Female Trump Supporter Sues For $23 MILLION After Berkeley Rioter Mauled Her With Pepper Spray)

Follow Eric on TwitterLike Eric on Facebook. Send story tips to erico@dailycaller.com.

PREMIUM ARTICLE: Subscribe To Keep Reading

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign Up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
BENEFITS READERS PASS PATRIOTS FOUNDERS
Daily and Breaking Newsletters
Daily Caller Shows
Ad Free Experience
Exclusive Articles
Custom Newsletters
Editor Daily Rundown
Behind The Scenes Coverage
Award Winning Documentaries
Patriot War Room
Patriot Live Chat
Exclusive Events
Gold Membership Card
Tucker Mug

What does Founders Club include?

Tucker Mug and Membership Card
Founders

Readers,

Instead of sucking up to the political and corporate powers that dominate America, The Daily Caller is fighting for you — our readers. We humbly ask you to consider joining us in this fight.

Now that millions of readers are rejecting the increasingly biased and even corrupt corporate media and joining us daily, there are powerful forces lined up to stop us: the old guard of the news media hopes to marginalize us; the big corporate ad agencies want to deprive us of revenue and put us out of business; senators threaten to have our reporters arrested for asking simple questions; the big tech platforms want to limit our ability to communicate with you; and the political party establishments feel threatened by our independence.

We don't complain -- we can't stand complainers -- but we do call it how we see it. We have a fight on our hands, and it's intense. We need your help to smash through the big tech, big media and big government blockade.

We're the insurgent outsiders for a reason: our deep-dive investigations hold the powerful to account. Our original videos undermine their narratives on a daily basis. Even our insistence on having fun infuriates them -- because we won’t bend the knee to political correctness.

One reason we stand apart is because we are not afraid to say we love America. We love her with every fiber of our being, and we think she's worth saving from today’s craziness.

Help us save her.

A second reason we stand out is the sheer number of honest responsible reporters we have helped train. We have trained so many solid reporters that they now hold prominent positions at publications across the political spectrum. Hear a rare reasonable voice at a place like CNN? There’s a good chance they were trained at Daily Caller. Same goes for the numerous Daily Caller alumni dominating the news coverage at outlets such as Fox News, Newsmax, Daily Wire and many others.

Simply put, America needs solid reporters fighting to tell the truth or we will never have honest elections or a fair system. We are working tirelessly to make that happen and we are making a difference.

Since 2010, The Daily Caller has grown immensely. We're in the halls of Congress. We're in the Oval Office. And we're in up to 20 million homes every single month. That's 20 million Americans like you who are impossible to ignore.

We can overcome the forces lined up against all of us. This is an important mission but we can’t do it unless you — the everyday Americans forgotten by the establishment — have our back.

Please consider becoming a Daily Caller Patriot today, and help us keep doing work that holds politicians, corporations and other leaders accountable. Help us thumb our noses at political correctness. Help us train a new generation of news reporters who will actually tell the truth. And help us remind Americans everywhere that there are millions of us who remain clear-eyed about our country's greatness.

In return for membership, Daily Caller Patriots will be able to read The Daily Caller without any of the ads that we have long used to support our mission. We know the ads drive you crazy. They drive us crazy too. But we need revenue to keep the fight going. If you join us, we will cut out the ads for you and put every Lincoln-headed cent we earn into amplifying our voice, training even more solid reporters, and giving you the ad-free experience and lightning fast website you deserve.

Patriots will also be eligible for Patriots Only content, newsletters, chats and live events with our reporters and editors. It's simple: welcome us into your lives, and we'll welcome you into ours.

We can save America together.

Become a Daily Caller Patriot today.

Signature

Neil Patel