Bill Maher pushed back on his show Friday night against University of California Berkeley students who want to disinvite him from giving a commencement speech, arguing that their protest is an indictment on them, not his beliefs.
More than 4,000 people have signed a petition calling on university administrators to cancel Maher’s December graduation speech due to his controversial views on Islam and public fight with actor Ben Affleck. The student group in charge of these speeches voted to rescind his invitation, but school administrators said they would be sticking by Maher as a speaker.
Maher was invited to speak at the Berkeley graduation in part because it is the 50th anniversary of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement.
“I guess they don’t teach irony in college anymore,” Maher said on HBO’s “Real Time.”
He skewered the students for trying to silence him because he holds beliefs different from theirs.
“Who ever told you that you didn’t have to hear what upset you?” Maher said. “So anyway the university has come down on my side and said what I hoped they would say all along, ‘We’re liberals. We are supposed to like free speech.’ So I want to come. I am planning to come.”
He also delivered a call to action for college students and his fellow liberals.
“Here is my final plea to you liberal — in the truest sense of the word — college students, not just at Berkeley but all over the world, please weigh in on this,” Maher said.
“My reputation isn’t on the line, yours is.”
Watch the clip below:
