3rd conservative speaker to test UC

Columnist Ben Shapiro accepts invitation to appear Sept. 14 in Berkeley

Conservative columnist Ben Shapiro — whose pro-Israel musings have pleased the right and angered the left — has accepted an invitation to speak at UC Berkeley on Sept. 14, student groups announced Tuesday.

Shapiro is the third in a string of conservatives invited this year to the famously liberal campus by the Berkeley College Republicans. The first two talks never took place.

On Feb. 1, rioters caused $100,000 of damage on the UC Berkeley campus — smashing windows and setting police equipment ablaze — to stop a scheduled speech by rightwing provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos.

In April, UC Berkeley administrators canceled an antiimmigration speech by rightwing pundit Ann Coulter, saying they couldn’t protect participants from rioting if it went ahead. Campus officials had offered to let Coulter speak during the day rather than at night, as Yiannopoulos had expected to do, and in a place away from the center of campus.

The campus Republicans said the rules were designed to minimize Coulter’s audience, and they rejected it.

The Berkeley College Republicans and the conservative Young America’s Foundation — whose efforts to promote conservative speakers on campuses have accelerated

since last year’s election of President Trump — have sued the University of California in federal court over Coulter’s canceled speech.

“Berkeley has a choice: To uphold the First Amendment rights of all students, or once again cave under pressure from extreme leftists and unconstitutionally censor conservative speech,” Spencer Brown, spokesman for the Young America’s Foundation, said in a statement.

He warned: “Berkeley administrators would be wise to offer the same platform to Ben Shapiro and the conservative students hosting him that they’ve given the parade of leftist speakers who've appeared at Berkeley.”

The groups have invited Shapiro to speak at 7 p.m. and have asked the campus to provide a place that will accommodate 500 attendees.

Shapiro, a 33-year-old graduate of Harvard Law School, is less of a provocateur than Yiannopoulos or Coulter. Instead, Shapiro uses his Web-based “Ben Shapiro Show” and other online columns to offer straightforward support for Trump and criticism of the latest Trump/ Russia revelations by a “self-righteous media,” or to declare it an “outright lie” that Palestinians want peace in the Middle East.

“The two-state solution is stupid,” Shapiro declares on YouTube, before delivering a lecture on the Middle East from his perspective.

Shapiro and the Young America’s Foundation sued Cal State Los Angeles in 2016 when campus officials barred Shapiro from speaking on that campus. Shapiro and the group dropped the suit this year after California State University changed its policies to welcome a broader range of speakers.

UC Berkeley spokesman Dan Mogulof said Tuesday that Shapiro is welcome at UC Berkeley.

“We will work with the student organization to ensure they can host a safe and successful event,” Mogulof said in a statement.

However, he reiterated the same rules that the campus made clear in the Yiannopoulos and Coulter visits: Campus police will perform a security assessment, and the campus will then determine where and when Shapiro will be allowed to speak.

“We are confident that arrangements can and will be made for Mr. Shapiro to speak on the Berkeley campus, with the exact date and time depending only on the availability of an appropriate venue and the recommendations of law enforcement professionals,” Mogulof said in the statement.

UC officials have asked the courts to throw out the students’ lawsuit. A hearing is scheduled for Aug. 25.