EducationPolitics

Coulter says she will visit UC Berkeley despite cancellation

Ann Coulter, shown in a recent appearance on The National, promises to be at the University of California, Berkeley to speak April 27 despite the school’s cancellation and offer to reschedule. She says it is a free speech issue. (Source: YouTube, The National)

Conservative author and commentator Ann Coulter told Fox News’ Sean Hannity Thursday night that she will show up at the University of California, Berkeley on April 27 despite the school’s cancellation of her scheduled appearance and an offer of an alternative date, which she rejected.

Coulter had been invited by the college Republicans. The school cancelled because of “safety concerns,” according to the Washington Post. Coulter thinks there is something more troublesome behind the flap.

“You cannot impose arbitrary and harassing restrictions on the exercise of a constitutional right,” she said Thursday night. “None of this has to do with security.”

The university reportedly offered her a speaking opportunity May 2, which Coulter and the College Republicans promptly turned down. Now the Republican group is threatening to sue the school.

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Writing for Fox News, John Moody likened protesters to playground bullies.

“What shuts him (or her, for our politically correct readers) up fastest,” he asked. “A bloody nose.”

“Bullies operate on the assumption that they are safe from retribution,” Moody continued. “When they find out that’s not true, they curdle like spoiled milk. Until then, their conduct can only spiral further out of control.”

He suggested that violent campus protesters should be prosecuted.

Protests against conservative speakers on university campuses have grown increasingly violent. Earlier this year, when Milo Yiannopoulos spoke at the University of Washington, there was a shooting outside. A man and wife were trying to attend the event but there was some sort of confrontation and one of the protesters was shot, apparently by the woman. She has since claimed self-defense.

Coulter is making plenty of hay out of this, and it is putting the campus protest efforts in an unfavorable spotlight. Not one to back down, she has gotten plenty of air time on Fox News over the controversy.  

Moody had this additional observation: “The reason for the original cancellation: college administrators feared her presence might pose a security risk. A risk to whom? Coulter? She can take care of herself. The students who, masked in balaclavas and paisley handkerchiefs, think the best way to express their opinion is to smash in windows and set fire to cars? They want their freedom of speech to be unabridged, including acts of violence. Coulter sets only verbal bonfires with her intentionally overheated rhetoric.”

Colleges and universities are supposed to be places where people learn and exchange ideas, noted one official in a statement, but lately that principle seems to apply only when all the ideas agree with one another.

Coulter suggested that violent protesters should be expelled.

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