UC ‘Speech Week’ in doubt as deadlines pass
A student group behind a vaguely organized gathering of right-wing speakers at UC Berkeley has failed to meet deadlines to sign contracts and pay fees for the campus’ principal event spaces, school officials said Sunday — casting doubt on whether the event will even take place.
The school is trying to determine whether any of the showcase speakers at the event that’s dubbed “Free Speech Week” and is scheduled to start in one week have even signed on, or were merely invited to attend.
“These events are the sole responsibility of a student organization on the Berkeley campus,” said Dan Mogulof, a UC Berkeley spokesman. “The organization has yet to show us any sort of confirmation that any of these speakers actually plan on coming to campus.”
The student group, Berkeley Patriot, did not respond to phone calls or emails Sunday but released a statement on its Facebook page saying the event is still on.
“We will continue to move forward on a version of the event that will consist mostly of outdoor events,” the group wrote. “This arrangement isn’t ideal for either party involved, so we would welcome the University choosing to come back to the table and allow us to continue with the indoor venues.”
A second group affiliated with right-wing speaker Milo Yiannopoulos, which has been promoting the event with several news releases in recent days, did not return phone calls and emails.
The event, scheduled for Sept. 24 to 27, has the campus community and the city on edge after major East Bay clashes between right-wing groups and masked anarchist demonstrators that have time and again erupted into violence.
Close to 200 professors and graduate students at UC Berkeley have signed a letter urging others to boycott campus over the four-day period.
On Thursday, the school was ready with ample security — police officers from around the region at a cost of $600,000 — to host conservative speaker Ben Shapiro. Despite nine people being arrested, the event, which was organized by the Berkeley College Republicans, went off with no major violence.
Earlier that day, the “Free Speech Week” folks announced a lineup of 20 speakers for their conference, including Yiannopoulos, former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon and right-wing pundit Ann Coulter.
Yiannopoulos came to the campus in February, sparking a riot that forced school officials to cancel the event. At the time, he was riding a wave of popularity in the conservative media and had a promising book deal with Simon & Schuster.
But past comments by Yiannopoulos condoning sex between gay men and willing teenage boys came to light earlier this year, prompting the publisher to kill the book deal and the American Conservative Union to disinvite him from its annual Conservative Political Action Conference.
The notorious provocateur, though, has returned to public light in recent weeks, granting interviews with local media and sending off media releases promoting his speaking events.
But it’s unclear if Yiannopoulos’ latest crusade in the Bay Area has any foothold or is rather an elaborate ruse to the school, the Berkeley community and the media.
UC Berkeley said Berkeley Patriot missed several deadlines to sign contracts to secure two of the event’s crucial venues — Wheeler Auditorium on Sept. 24 and Zellerbach Auditorium on Sept. 27.
The school even extended the deadline to reserve the spaces until Friday, when Berkeley Patriot signed the contracts but didn’t pay the fee, rendering the contract meaningless, officials said. The student group is also required to submit paperwork to campus police so officials can adequately staff the events with enough security. Mogulof said the organizers have not filed such paperwork.
“It was not a capricious deadline,” he said. “Putting in place all the security, you don’t do that overnight. The Police Department needs 10 days. All of the events came with their own security assessment.”