UC Republicans strike a blow for free speech

The Berkeley College Republicans celebrated a landmark victory Dec. 3 in their lawsuit against UC Berkeley for its repeated infringement of their First Amendment rights over the course of last year.

This two-year lawsuit was a David vs. Goliath struggle, with a small but determined band of students taking on a behemoth. The lawsuit was actually a response to four separate speaker events, which were obstructed in some form or other at UC Berkeley in 2017.

The first of these events occurred on Feb. 1, 2017, with Milo Yiannopoulos as the keynote speaker, when an army of masked antifa agitators besieged Berkeley, attacking bystanders and causing more than $100,000 worth of property damage — all to prevent a one-hour lecture.

For the second event, with conservative commentator (and Cal alumnus) David Horowitz, the university demanded a $6,000 security fee and placed several restrictions on the event through an unwritten “high-profile speaker policy.”

In March 2017, I invited Ann Coulter to represent the conservative perspective on immigration. I chose to invite Coulter because she is objectively the most relevant conservative pundit on the topic of immigration in the Donald Trump era. Her views on the issue have since become predominant within the Republican Party.

I was under no illusions that Coulter would be a popular figure at Berkeley, but I believed very strongly that her perspective deserved to be heard on campus. Coulter was someone uniquely positioned to give liberal students a chance to learn the views of the other side and either strengthen their own views or change them based on the new information.

This event was sponsored by a nonpartisan student organization that had previously hosted Maria Echaveste, a former deputy chief of staff for President Bill Clinton, to discuss the liberal perspective on immigration. But when Coulter was to speak, the university administration began invoking the same policy as with Horowitz.

Berkeley Campus Republicans canceled their event with Horowitz due to the security costs and mounting restrictions, and UC Berkeley blocked Coulter’s event, citing unspecified “security concerns,” despite the fact that Berkeley antifa members had said in a commentary in the Daily Cal that they had no intentions to disrupt Coulter’s lecture.

After attempts at hosting three conservative speaker events, it became clear to me that there were two sets of rules at Berkeley — one for liberal students and one for conservatives — and that the only way to remedy this injustice was to file a lawsuit. Our case received support from many quarters, including the U.S. Department of Justice.

While the litigation was pending, we hosted our fourth event: a lecture by Ben Shapiro in September 2017. With Shapiro, the university tried many of the same tactics, along with a few new ones, but the event proceeded after a public outcry and a few sternly worded letters from our attorneys.

All of this led to our settlement, in which the university will no longer require security fees that are based on subjective assessments that take into consideration the heckler’s veto. Students will now be able to host events for free in classrooms and student-government-owned venues.

UC Berkeley had tried to minimize the importance of this lawsuit, but as it led to a tangible restructuring of university policies, we consider it a significant victory for free speech.

This case will serve as yet another reminder to universities that the trend of suppressing conservative speech is not supported by law.

Universities stand at a fork in the road: If they can hold themselves to their standard of serving as a sanctuary for all forms of ideas, however unpopular, then they will once again serve a vital and honorable role in society.

If, however, they choose to continue down a path of censorship, then the consequences may be disastrous — both on and off campus.