Freedom Center Responds with Posters Declaring “Berkeley Hates Free Speech”
David Horowitz, author of New York Times bestseller Big Agenda: President Trump’s Plan to Save America was scheduled to speak at UC Berkeley on Wednesday, April 12, but his planned visit—already beset by numerous restrictions and impediments from the university—was cancelled when his hosts, the Berkeley College Republicans, learned less than 48 hours before the event that they would be responsible for thousands of dollars in room rental – for a room the university demanded be a half mile away from campus – and security fees.
Horowitz’s hosts, the UC-Berkeley College Republicans, originally invited Horowitz to speak in the late afternoon when most classes are over and students would be available to hear him. But UC administrators insisted Horowitz could speak only at 1PM when afternoon classes are starting and most students would have difficulty attending. The UC police department also instructed Horowitz and the CRs not to advertise the location of the event but to keep it secret until just before the event itself. “In other words,” Horowitz commented, “the Berkeley administration has taken a page out of Orwell. Berkeley promotes itself as the ‘home of the free speech movement,’ but conservatives are free to speak only as long as they remain hidden.”
The Berkeley College Republicans agreed to these onerous restrictions under duress, but they were still blindsided by the University’s last-minute bill for security amounting to $5788—which the university claimed was the “bare minimum”—and an estimated $2000+ for rental of the room the University insisted on which was a half-mile away.
“We saw this bill for the first time today,” Berkeley College Republicans External Vice President Branden West wrote on April 10th to Horowitz and to Patrick Coyle of Young America’s Foundation, which was co-sponsoring the speech. “We share your deep frustrations with an administration and a police force that have made it so difficult for a college club to invite a prominent intellectual to speak. This is the state of free speech at the University of California, Berkeley.”
“University officials will tell you that the restrictions were necessary to ensure public safety, but this will just be the most egregious of their self-serving lies,” declared Horowitz.
Horowitz was scheduled to talk about the Trump administration and its enemies, and on Berkeley’s role in the campus sanctuary movement, an organized sedition to undermine the ability of the federal government to protect its citizens against criminals and terrorists. “Sedition, not free speech, is the true Berkeley legacy and tradition,” says Horowitz, “and patriotic Americans should not be intimidated by the threat of violence from defending their country.”
Horowitz is not the only conservative speaker to be turned away from Berkeley. When activist Milo Yiannopoulos attempted to speak on campus two months ago, anarchists staged a riot, injuring several bystanders and causing $100,000 in property damage, and resulting in the cancellation of his speech. Campus police were present but did nothing to prevent or stop it.
“Berkeley should be ashamed for its unconscionable failure to support free expression and intellectual diversity on a public university campus,” commented Horowitz. “At the same time UC Berkeley and universities like it discourage conservatives, they open their arms to racist organizations like Black Lives Matter and terrorist support groups like Students for Justice in Palestine, a range of radical organizations. They provide them with offices and money, and deploy their police forces to destroy posters and literature opposing them. This behavior is a pretty clear violation of the civil rights of conservative students, who pay the same tuition at taxpayer funded institutions as leftwing fascists do.”
Unwilling to take the administration’s censorship lying down, the Freedom Center plastered the Berkeley campus early Wednesday morning with posters bearing the hashtag #BerkeleyHatesFreeSpeech accompanying a picture of Horowitz with tape covering his mouth.
“Berkeley is a disgrace,” Horowitz concluded. “But it is just the most visible example of a nationwide trend among universities to bow to the desires of the totalitarian left and further their goal of suppressing ideas they don’t like.”
David Horowitz is the founder and CEO of the David Horowitz Freedom Center, a not-for-profit organization located in Sherman Oaks, California. This spring, the Center launched a campaign opposing the declaration of “sanctuary campuses” as seditious efforts to undermine the Patriot Act and cripple the efforts of the Department of Homeland Security to protect Americans. So far, the campaign has targeted 11 California schools in the UC and Cal State systems with “WANTED” posters featuring UC president Janet Napolitano and Cal State University Chancellor Timothy White. The posters call for these administrators to be prosecuted for sedition and their campuses defunded. The posters are part of what will be a national campaign targeting university administrators who, in an effort to appease radical students and faculty, flagrantly break federal law and obstruct federal officials from protecting American citizens. More information on the Stop Sanctuary Campuses campaign may be found at www.nosanctuarycampus.org.