The mayor of Berkeley, Cal. is asking University of California-Berkeley to cancel its upcoming Free Speech Week.
The event, spearheaded by Milo Yiannopoulos and rumored to include Ann Coulter and Steve Bannon, is a part of Yiannopoulos’ come back tour, Troll Academy.
UC Berkeley chancellor Carol Christ welcomed students back to school last week by announcing the school year as the “Free Speech Year” in a campus-wide email. In the email, she vowed to protect upcoming speeches like Yiannopoulos’ and Ben Shapiro’s and encouraged students to be vocal but not violent.
“Call toxic speech out for what it is, don’t shout it down, for in shouting it down, you collude in the narrative that universities are not open to all speech,” Christ said in her email. “Respond to hate speech with more speech.”
Berkeley Mayor Jesse Arreguin is afraid that the Free Speech Week will have similar results to the last time Yiannopoulos came to campus — riots and violence from the left.
Just this past Sunday, antifa members counter-protested a right-wing rally which ended with violent left-wing activists stalking and threatening well-known Republican students at the campus.
One UC Berkeley student, Troy Worden, told Fox News, “I just want to call out the mayor of Berkeley and the chancellor of the university. I want to tell them that you should stop telling the police to stand down and protect all Americans regardless of their political ideology.”
Mayor Arreguin told the San Francisco Chronicle, “I don’t want Berkeley being used as a punching bag.”
Free Speech Week is currently scheduled to take place from September 24-to-27.
