I’ve always despised the conservative commentator Ann Coulter, especially for writing a book that largely made fun of those who accept evolution. In fact, I wrote a satirical piece for the New Republic excoriating her dumb anti-evolution book Godless (my piece, called “Coultergeist“, is free online).
But I’m also for free speech, which trumps (pardon the word) the perceived offensiveness of a speaker’s ideas. So I have big-time objections to the University of California’s canceling of Coulter’s speech at Berekeley planned for April 27—due to, as the Washington Post reports, “safety concerns”:
In a letter to a campus Republican group that invited Coulter to speak [Young America’s Foundation], university officials said Wednesday that they made the decision to cancel Coulter’s appearance after assessing the violence that flared on campus in February, when the same college Republican group invited right-wing provocateur and now-former Breitbart News senior editor Milo Yiannopoulos to speak. As the protest and clashes escalated during the Yiannopoulos’ event, some began setting fires, throwing rocks and molotov cocktails and attacking members of the crowd.
That’s ridiculous, for it motivates those who don’t like a speaker to threaten violence: what better way to shut someone down? (It’s worked well for Muslims, of course.) It’s Berkeley’s responsibility to muster enough security to protect Coulter and prevent violence. The WaPo adds this:
Coulter said in an email to The Washington Post on Wednesday that the university had been trying to force her to cancel her speech by “imposing ridiculous demands” on her but that she still agreed “to all of their silly requirements.” She said she believes that her speech “has been unconstitutionally banned” by the “public, taxpayer-supported UC-Berkeley.”
Coulter said the university insisted that her speech take place in the middle of the day, that only students could attend and that the exact venue wouldn’t be announced until the last minute. She said that she agreed with the conditions but that apparently wasn’t good enough.
“They just up and announced that I was prohibited from speaking anyway,” Coulter said, noting that her speech topic was to be immigration, the subject of one of her books. “I feel like the Constitution is important and that taxpayer-supported universities should not be using public funds to violate American citizens’ constitutional rights.”
In this Twitter post she vows to speak anyway. Good for her!
UC Berkeley shuts down .@AnnCoulter's planned speech. Ann: I AM giving the speech. What will they do? Arrest me? pic.twitter.com/Pd6AM5J99X
— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) April 20, 2017
The University said they’ll try to reschedule Coulter’s visit for September, and their decision was made because they consider the safety of students paramount. Again, this just prompts people to threaten the safety of speakers and attendees as a way to censor speech they don’t like.
It’s telling that Robert Reich, a liberal who was Bill Clinton’s Secretary of Labor and is now Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy at the Goldman School of Public Policy at Berkeley, objected to this cancellation on his Facebook page:
h/t: Heather Hastie
An Coulter is a sociopath. I don’t know why people can’t see it. But she intrigues me. I disagree with most of what she says but why silence her?
I get the feeling that she’s more of an opportunist than a sociopath, considering both Bill Maher and Jon Stewart are friends with her. Seems to me that all three of those people (like many ideologically biased media figureheads) recognize that they just say things on TV that affirm the beliefs of their audiences, they do it for money, and they’re fine with that.
I find that disgusting in another way, but still…
Saw this in the news this morning and figured it would not take long to make it here. Everyone should listen to Ann so they can see and understand how such crap comes out of the mouth. Oh, I forgot, we have Trump and replays on CNN to remind us everyday. Welcome to the world, kiddies at Berkeley, or welcome to the playpen.
Robert Reich is extremely liberal, at least on economic matters, and a person I admire greatly. His views on the Coulter talk should put to rest the right wing lie that attempts to conflate all liberals with the extremist fringe.
But hold on, you’re forgetting that Reich’s refusal to condemn any prospect of Coulter ever talking anywhere makes him alt-right, a white supremicist and virtually a Nazi.
… according to the logic on twitter, anyhow …
He had given a kind of silly answer about “false flag” while discussing the Milo riots. Reich is a good man, so I think he either talked to someone with a better take or just reevaluated his own general view.
I agree that Coulter should be allowed to speak.
On a different matter, WEIT has noted cases of plagiarism, and one appears to be at work here. Both Reich’s Facebook posting and the Washington Post article have wording that is identical or nearly so.
I’ve read both and don’t see a problem. Can you be more specific?
In the first paragraph of each work, read the section beginning with “In a letter” and ending with “to speak.” The similarities are too great to ignore. To Heather Hastie’s remark that Reich does this all the time, I think it is a questionable practice. Reich makes no mention of the Post article, and the reader is left to assume that Reich’s words are his own. Apparently, some are not.
Reich does that all the time – he quotes a chunk of the article he’s posting in his comment. He does it without quote marks, but regular followers like me recognize the practice. I don’t see it as plagiarism because I’m used to the way he does his Facebook posts, though I can see why someone new to his posts might think that.
He also ends all the quotes with “What do you think? ” in order to generate discussion. The posts and comments become part of his nightly live on Facebook ‘Resistance Report’ about opposing Trump and regaining public offices for the Democrats.
The administration is behaving badly, but I have to say I’m more annoyed at the student body protestors who have acted violently in the past and thus caused the administration to have this concern. The administration is conceding to a heckler’s veto. That’s wrong. But these particular hecklers assault people and smash store windows, so IMO it’s a bit understandable why the University would decide they just prefer not to have such events.
Perhaps a more even-handedly draconian solution is needed; no outside speakers, period, for a year, for any club. You want to riot about Coulter, you don’t get your lib speakers either. Then schedule some conservative speaker for just after the end of the 1-year ban, and if the riots happen again, slam the gates down for another year. Send the message to the students: you get the privileges of grown-ups when you can behave like them.
What happens to students who do things like riot, destroy property, pull fire alarms, etc?
Any instances of them getting kicked out of school or even arrested?
Eventually they put a Donald Trump into power then wonder how.
Case closed I think.
It seems they’re never identified, so never arrested. So, we don’t know who they are.
The ones who got the Milo talk shut down were thought to be outside agitators. I can’t remember the name of the group.
As far as I’m aware, I can’t think of any instance in which students have been punished for shutting down conservative or right wing speakers with violence. The administrations at the schools where these events have continually happened seem to have accepted their view that the students felt “violated” or “assaulted” or “had violence committed against them” by the speech.
I consider the administrations that continue to allow these shenanigans just as complicit in the breakdown of campus free speech and intellectual dialogue as the students themselves — perhaps even more complicit. Does anyone think that if right wing students used violence to shut down a left wing speaker, they wouldn’t be dealt with swiftly and harshly by such administrations? I certainly don’t.
I don’t think many city or campus police forces are really staffed well enough to ever apprehend a full scale riot. When there’s one police officer per hundred angry folk, the police’s options are limited. They can tear gas the students to try and get them to disperse (which Berkeley has probably done once or twice a decade since the ’70s). They can probably direct the flow of the riot away from some specific buildings. But they aren’t going to be able to wade in and arrest individuals without serious risk to both the officer and innocent peaceful protestors.
To stop and arrest a several hundred person riot takes several hundred police. We don’t live in a police state where that amount of enforcement exists.
They could and probably should react much faster to arrest toublemakers before the violence goes into full swing. ‘Nip it in the bud’ as much as possible. Get that first guy to throw a rock, before other potential rock throwers figure out they can get away with it. But especially now, with smartphones being used to coordinate flash mobs and such, I think we have to recognize that the normal officer to citizen ratio is too low for them to foil any well-coordinated act of public violence in real time.
Oh, I agree that they’re not equipped to intervene in the moment, but generally, there is a great amount of footage when these events take place, both from individual people and security cameras. Why aren’t these utilized to identify and punish the students responsible, as they often are with other crimes? Hell, a single unchallenged witness statement is enough to get someone expelled for an alleged Title IX violation these days.
Perhaps the footage isn’t clear enough for a legal prosecution? I remember watching news footage of a Berkeley riot in the ’90s where mobs of people went down Telegraph looting stores. You could clearly see individuals going in and out of stores carrying all sorts of stuff. You could unquestionably identify what they were wearing, most of the time identify male or female, general skin color, hair length…but as a juror would I be willing to say “yes, the face of the guy on the 100′ news shot is the face of the dude standing in front of me in court today…and I’m fairly certain of it?” Probably not.
‘Nip it in the bud’
Shouldn’t that be attributed to Deputy Sheriff Barney Fife, what with the concern for plagiarism and all in this posting? 😉
Supporting freedom of speech we like is easy. Supporting freedom of speech we hate is not, but more important. The First Amendment is not needed for a speech on the virtues of apple pie.
WEIT has recently identified cases of plagiarism, the most recent involving the newest supreme-court justice. Here we find identical, or nearly so, wording in Reich’s Facebook posting and the Washington Post article. Someone was lazy.
I hadn’t notioed! Thanks to readers for pointing that out.
See my comment above re this.
Wow, if we have plagiarism on face book, what next…plagiarism on twitter. I cannot stand it. Someone must do something.
🙂
“Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery”- I’m of the opinion that, unless someone is passing another person’s words off as their own for profit or for greater personal approval and recognition, that it doesn’t fit the legal definition of “plagiarism”. Reich may well be walking a “thin line” in what he’s doing, but if the sentiments expressed are valuable, I see no reason to not use any means available to “get them out there.” It IS, however, simple consideration to credit the original source.
I think it would be better if he just put the bits he’s quoting in quotes. But, as I said, anyone who follows him regularly knows what he’s doing.
Oops! When my original comments didn’t appear, I thought they were lost. They weren’t. My apologies.
I want her to speak. The more she opens her mouth, the more she is despised.
I don’t want to hear her speak. That would just make my head hurt. All in favor of letting her speak – I just won’t listen. Have heard enough of this fatuous provocateur.
First they cam for the Nazis, but I was not a Nazi so I did not care…
‘came’ not ‘cam’
I posted a parody along those lines a couple of years ago, and it seemed that no-one realised that it was a parody… 🙁
Can’t we just extend the same criteria for faculty to invited speakers?
I hope we agree Anne Coulter’s speech offers no academic value whatsoever.
No, I don’t agree that her speech holds no academic value. There is great value in hearing what your ideological opponents have to say, great value in engaging in civil dialogue with them, and this value hones the ability to debate one’s arguments. In addition, a student club’s right to invite a speaker shouldn’t be decided based on someone’s arbitrary decision regarding whether or not the speaker’s words (which they haven’t even heard yet) may hold academic value or not.
Some things have been debated already and there is no need to revisit.
She can always stand on a milk crate at the park.
Like god. We all know that god exists, so there’s no reason to debate it anymore. Amarite?
Is Banned at Berkeley the new Banned in Boston?
There are good reasons not to cancel Coulter’s speech, points Reich makes. But I don’t see how this is a free speech issue. No one is gagging her. She has plenty of outlets for her hateful views. Is a university obligated to provide a platform for any and all viewpoints? Here are just some of the things Coulter has said:
“We should invade their countries, kill their leaders, and convert them to Christianity.”
“My only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times Building.”
“I think the government should be spying on all Arabs, engaging in torture as a televised spectator sport, dropping daisy cutters wantonly throughout the Middle East and sending liberals to Guantanamo.”
“There is a growing body of evidence that radiation in excess of what the government says are the minimum amounts you should be exposed to are actually good for you and reduce cases of cancer.”
“There’s a cultural acceptance of child rape in Latino culture that doesn’t exist in even the most dysfunctional American ghettos. When it comes to child rape, the whole family gets involved.”
“If we took away women’s right to vote, we’d never have to worry about another democrat president. It’s kind of a pipe dream. It’s a personal fantasy of mine.”
Denying Ann Coulter a podium is not a free speech issue, it’s a decency issue.
Nobody says they have to invite her.
But once she’s invited, she should be able to speak. If threats of violence are shutting down the talk, that’s a free speech issue.
I think there’s some truth to the low-level radiation thing.
The rest is somewhere between BS and despicable, of course.
You don’t think it is a free speech issue? If you say you are not a racist and then condemn the judge who you say is Mexican and he ruled against you on a case because he is a Mexican, is that not a racist? No, it’s just Donald Trump.
Is a university obligated to provide a platform for any and all viewpoints?
If a student organization invites someone to articulate those viewpoints, then yes. This is straightforward.
As for the concept of “decency” trumping civil rights… I hear some clocks striking thirteen.
So… just so I understand the rules here… Preventing a student groups at a public university from inviting speakers that they pick isn’t a violation of their rights?
I really tire of this “it isn’t free speech” excuse for shutting down speakers, invited by students, at universities. How does this not eliminate the free exchange of ideas at institutions whose primary purpose is to promote the exchange/promotion/critique of ideas? What is a university for if not that?
This is a publicly funded school. As such, it is protected by the First Amendment. The courts have already decided this issue. Publicly funded schools do not have the right to shut down the speech of others on their campus (regardless of whether or not they have other outlets through which they can express it). Once a speaker is invited by a student group to a public university, that speaker has First Amendment protection.
To so shut down speech seems to me to be a motivation of certain noble souls in this “exceptional” country who want to privatize as much as possible.
If a public university authorizes duly recognized student groups to invite speakers on campus, the university is prohibited from discriminating among those speakers based on the speakers’ viewpoint.
Thus spake the First Amendment.
However, unless someone takes legal action against the school? All it takes is money.
“Is a university obligated to provide a platform for any and all viewpoints?”
‘It’s not anti free-speech, it’s no-platforming’ are the new left’s weasel words equivalent to the right’s Jim Crow laws.
Both are as odious.
Curiously the “this garbage doesn’t belong on university” never arises when lefties invite communists to their unis.
Of course. You see, colleges and universities are one of the only industries that is controlled by the left, and they are tightening their grip.
Those comments are so funny, half of them are satirical and if you don’t see that you are stupid, like really stupid. IE: she means but its over the top.
1) ‘Eclipse’ might be a sufficiently close synonym to ‘trump’, that perhaps you could now say that “free speech rights eclipses the perceived offensiveness of a speakers ideas”.
It’s actually not listed on thesaurus.com, but IMO it does the job better than all of their suggestions which include “defeat” or “overtake”.
2) I recall that when Robert Reich’s book “Reason” came out, the hardback edition had a blurb on the back by Al Franken saying “They’ve got ‘Treason’, we’ve got ‘Reason'”. [‘Treason’ was a recent book by Coulter-JLH]
On the paperback edition, this was altered to read “They’ve got Ann Coulter, we’ve got Robert Reich”.
I greatly preferred the first version, but maybe it was too arcane for some people.
3) Coulter has so many red flags, it is hard to know where to begin, but her obsession with a absurdly broad definition of treason (which demands execution), and her declaration that she wished Timothy McVeigh had bombed the New York Times would be awfully high on my list.
The latter utterly disqualifies her (at the very least!!!) from having any opinion on how the US should fight terrorism.
4) To me, a fascinating but little-discussed episode in the misadventures of AC was her dissing of soccer as a game, which she seemed to regard as an effeminate sport. She actually attacked the moral character of soccer fans, and displayed some rudimentary misunderstandings of the game. (No surprise there.)
Now the reaction of the progressive community to this was actually glee that she had said something so self-evidently stupid that she had put not only her foot in her mouth but half her leg. (My own analogy.)
When she discussed this on Sean Hannity’s show, she seemed to: 4a) think liberals had been horribly offended; they were not, they were overjoyed at her reaching a new level of madness. 4b) talked the whole segment with SH as if she had merely made an aesthetic criticism of of soccer; she had not- she had attacked it morally.
How oblivious to the obvious can one be? Both to other people’s perception of you, and what you actually said??
5) I especially liked one of Al Franken’s ripostes to her. They were both being interviewed on a talk show, and were asked if you could have been someone famous, who would you like to have been? AC initially answered Senator McCarthy, but then said she would have liked to have been Franklin Roosevelt and then NOT done the New Deal. Al Franken replied, “As long as we’re wanting to be famous people so we can change their decisions, then I would like to have been Hitler, and then skipped the whole Holocaust thing…But I would keep the Volkswagen.” (Appropriate to note this on Hitler’s birthday, I hope???)
6) Both Coulter’s book “Godless” and the remake of “The Omen” were knowingly and deliberately released on June 6, 2006. (6/6/06). The remake was not very good- the earlier one with Gregory Peck and Lee Remick is better- but it is much better than Coulter’s book 🙂
I’m conflicted on this one.
I have no interest in hearing her – I think she’s a poisonous provocateur; but I agree that others should be able to hear her if they want.
But Berkeley (city) has just had a pro-Trump rally that degenerated into a free-for-all between pro- and anti-T factions. The Berkeley police came in for some criticism for failing to be more active in intervening (though arrests were made), but the police chief pointed out that the police are not well equipped to get into the middle of such events – it’s one thing to defend property or a person or small group being attacked by a larger one, when you can claim that extreme force might legitimately be used to prevent that harm, but quite another to send a small group of officers into a general melee. And I’m sure the damage to both university and non-university property when Milo came to speak has made the university administration conscious of the cost of allowing the event.
Perhaps Eric’s solution is the best, unless you are prepared to turn the campus and surrounds into an armed camp – and who foots the bill for that exercise? – in an attempt to prevent violence. Not a good solution, just the least bad.
UC Berkeley to those committing violence: “your tactic is working – keep it up”.
+ 1
I never tire of mocking the repugnant and bat-shit-crazy Ms. Coulter (and never tire of linking to this riotous and NSFW short story she inspired), but she has the exact same First Amendment right to be heard as any other swingin’ dick (of either gender) invited to speak on a public university campus by a duly recognized student group. Period/Full stop.
“I feel like the Constitution is important and that taxpayer-supported universities should not be using public funds to violate American citizens’ constitutional rights.”
Oh my goodness, I just agreed with Ann Coulter. I feel dirty.
I’m going to take a shower now.
Indeed. I need one now, too.
This is all getting beyond a joke so I suggest a Kickstarter campaign to raise money for Punchline!, a comedy quiz show format touring US and UK universities.
Based on BBC Radio 4’s News Quiz, the three panellists will be Ann Coulter, Katy Hopkins and Milo Yiannopoulos (remember him?). Louise Mensch will be an alternate panellist. The Chair will be the world’s funniest comic, Andy Kindler. Questions will be on news topics of the day and whoever responds with the most disingenuous and provocative guano will be determined by Andy Kindler who merely has to keep in mind how much like Hitler the panellists are: his judgment will be arbitrary and not subject to appeal.
The winner of each round will receive a punch from Dan Arel. To be delivered from any angle at any random point in the show. Nunchucks may be used: trepanning and Health and Safety-checked medieval torture implements are optional.
The overall winner will be whoever requires hospitalization. Dan and Andy will not be held liable for any legal expenses for they are by definition innocent, good and fine candidates for the role of Censor-in-Chief.
All hail, Punchline!
Thanks for the link to the essay on Ann Coulter. Really enjoyed it.
One thought. Take this quote from the essay: “We’ve known for years that nearly half of all Americans believe in the Genesis account of creation, and only about 10 percent want evolution taught in public schools without mentioning ID or other forms of creationism.”
Might it be a good idea to speak of one of the two Genesis accounts of creation? After all, there really are two separate creation stories in (the KJV) Genesis.
Genesis 1 and 2 each has a creation story. There is only modest overlap between them. Eve’s creation account is markedly different in the two versions. Logically, one of the versions must be wrong. (Sensible people regard them as both wrong.) And the Bible is therefore fallible.
Creationists need to be constantly reminded of this.
The New York Times is reporting that Berkeley has reversed its decision.
I figured this would happen sooner or later. All that was accomplished by this silly action is to make the odious Coulter look like a victim. Sigh.
yep Coulter is crap, no doubt. Unfortunately she will most likely be seeing an increase in book sales after this incident. Same thing happened to Charles Murray, probably Ben Shapiro and would most likely happen to Milo if he ever wrote his book. So if you like these people (I do not like the views of Coulter, Shapiro or Milo) then please continue to shut them down on campus, it will make their banal and fallacious views appear more controversial and interesting than they really are. If they were to speak in a half filled auditorium and get eviscerated during the Q and A session by educated college students, that would have a much better effect.
I hate Ann Coulter, that harpy. But I will never censor her stupidity. The heckler’s veto has been the favorite tool of the regressive left to stifle unpopular speech.
sub
Ann Coulter is truly a toxic crank who has no credentials other than being an open racist and apologist for right wing religious dogma. Her loss of Berkeley as a forum for her hateful rants if no loss of free speech.
I know! If you want to provide her with an outlet for her trash, why not invite her to poet here?
^post^
She’s a best selling author with a law degree from the University of Michigan. What “credentials” do you require of a speaker, and do all the speakers you prefer meet your criteria? Don’t get me wrong – I despise Coulter, but I can’t help thinking you’re confusing credentials with acceptable (to you) viewpoints.
What makes you think Jerry wants to provide her with an outlet for her trash? The Berkeley college Republican group wants to provide that outlet. Should any group that threatens violence be given a veto over any public speech they don’t like? Or does Phil Rounds get to decide which speech is worth protecting and which isn’t?
I suppose that if she adheres to Da Roolz like everyone else, Prof. Coyne would allow her to comment here. I don’t think he would ban her based solely on who she is and what opinions she has expressed elsewhere.
Reblogged this on jtveg's Blog and commented:
Deplatforming is wrong.
Every time I read about the silencing tactics on the left wing, I get a little more uncomfortable. The public left wing politic is toxic, puritan in intent, and ultimately self-defeating. And that for me is hard to watch.