UC Berkeley: Where free speech dies, violence rewarded. Again.

Near the center of campus at UC-Berkeley, just off of the Free Speech bikeway sits the Free Speech Movement Cafe, a nod to the student movement that began after University administrators shut down the school’s last place to openly advocate for policies and principles.

There’s a small memorial noting the historic events that took place as students stood up for their First Amendment rights. A plaque reads: “In the fall of 1964, a student protest movement galvanized this campus and shocked the nation.”

More than 50 years later, liberal protestors have terrorized Berkeley’s campus and shocked the nation with their intolerance of conservatism.

{mosads}Today, protesters and university administrators alike work to undermine or disrupt conservative events and activities, and often act unconstitutionally in order to silence freedom’s principles.

It’s a shame that Berkeley, once the birthplace for a generation’s free speech movement, has become its graveyard.

Berkeley needs a new free speech movement, and Young America’s Foundation is leading the charge by bringing conservative firebrand Ann Coulter to speak on April 27, despite the University’s decision to cancel her YAF-sponsored lecture.

I acceded to Berkeley’s every silly demand (never made of lib speakers). Called their bluff & they canceled anyway. https://t.co/EQsiAEWPpW

— Ann Coulter (@AnnCoulter) April 19, 2017

As has become the norm at Berkeley, campus leftists and school administrators didn’t waste time in undermining Coulter’s lecture by imposing prior restraints and suppressing free speech by heckler’s veto — both unconstitutional.  

While Berkeley’s administration can wrongly and unilaterally cancel lectures by prominent conservatives, it cannot cancel the First Amendment. This campus lecture, one of the hundreds sponsored by Young America’s Foundation every year, is about more than bridging a divide or having a dialogue, it’s a fight for the First Amendment — the right to simply speak.

#BREAKING: UC Berkeley cancels Milo Yiannopoulos after violent protests break out on campus https://t.co/jocXNElivr pic.twitter.com/wfyoZshLZZ

— The Hill (@thehill) February 2, 2017

Berkeley has the power to allow leftist rioters to continue decimating their community and making their school an embarrassment to higher learning, or to stand for First Amendment freedoms. Whether Berkeley likes it or not, Young America’s Foundation is standing up for students’ rights and sending Coulter to Berkeley to deliver, for once, a conservative point of view.

Spencer Brown is the digital director of Young America’s Foundation. Follow him on Twitter at @itsSpencerBrown.

The views expressed by contributors are their own and are not the views of The Hill.