Higher education is weird.
Conservative activist and Daily Wire Editor Ben Shapiro is scheduled to deliver an address at the University of California, Berkeley on Sept. 14.
In preparation for his speech, which is being sponsored by the Young America’s Foundation and College Republicans, the university announced this week that it would offer counseling for any student or faculty member who felt threatened by Shapiro’s views.
We’re not making this up.
“We are deeply concerned about the impact some speakers may have on individuals’ sense of safety and belonging,” Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost Paul Alivisatos said in a campus-wide email. “No one should be made to feel threatened or harassed simply because of who they are or for what they believe.”
He added that the campus would provide “support and counseling services for students, staff and faculty.”
Shapiro, who is Jewish, is a veteran of the conservative speaking circuit. Though his talks usually include red-meat one-liners designed to provoke progressives and he’s not one to shy away from staking out the conservative position in the culture wars, he focuses a great deal of his time on First Amendment issues.
Put more simply, he isn’t a lunatic skinhead coming in off some off-beat Internet message board to discuss the dangers of miscegenation or whatever. In fact, Shapiro’s an outspoken and frequent critic of the so-called alt-right, which has made him the target of a seemingly endless barrage of anti-Semitic online harassment.
Considering who Shapiro is, as well as his positions, Berkeley’s preparations for his upcoming talk would seem like an overreaction. Then again, the university was rocked in February by violence surrounding the appearance of far-right provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos, an actual member of the alt-right. Protesters turned violent then, attacking members of Yiannopoulos’ audience and trashing the Berkeley campus.
In short, it was a mess. Perhaps, then, the university’s fear regarding the Shapiro talk is somewhat understandable.
That said, there are a number of actions Berkeley has taken ahead of the upcoming address that don’t deserve any defense.
First, they tried to prohibit Shapiro from appearing at all. Cowardly. After they ditched that effort, finally giving into the speaking request, they reduced the number of seats available at the provided venue and demanded the organizers pay a $10,000 “security fee,” according to the Washington Free Beacon’s Alex Griswold.
Cowardly again.
Berkeley likes to pride itself on its open-mindedness and forward-thinking. Flinching away from a good-faith effort to dialogue about conservative (even controversial!) positions is the opposite of both of those things.
