After months of publicity, liberal comedian Bill Maher finally got to give his much contested commencement speech at the University of California Berkeley over the weekend.
Maher’s speech had become the center of controversy back in October after he got into a televised argument with Ben Affleck over Islam. His statements criticized the religion and more than 4,000 people signed an online petition calling on Berkeley to ban him from speaking at commencement. The student leadership took a vote against Maher, but Nicholas B. Dirks, the chancellor at Berkeley, said that the university would not rescind the invitation to speak.
Maher denounced the petitioners, saying that it contradicted Berkeley’s historical commitment to free speech.
During the commencement speech, he touched on this same theme, but didn’t address the conflict directly.
“I recognize that this university, on the fiftieth anniversary of the Berkeley free speech movement, made a statement by choosing me for this speech, and I would like to say I appreciate that, and I’d also like to say: I think you made the right statement,” he said.
“Come on, it’s Berkeley. I think I can speak freely here. I mean, I hope I can.”
He, of course, couldn’t help but take a couple of jabs at the GOP and also repeated some of his comments about how free speech is essential to being a liberal.
“If you call yourself a liberal, you have to fight oppression from wherever it comes from…. That’s what makes you a liberal,” Maher said. He urged them to be “free thinkers” and gave them his own special brand of graduation advice, “As you go down the path of life, ask what’s true, not who else believes it!”
News reports from the speech said that some students rose and turned their back on Maher when he spoke, holding up signs that said, “Don’t Maher the commencement.” Several students with anti-Maher or pro-Islam signs also stood outside the building where the commencement ceremony took place. No one disrupted the speech and his words were largely met with cheers.
Watch Maher’s full speech below:
