[caption id=”attachment_83218″ align=”aligncenter” width=”607″] AP/Janet Van Ham
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Bill Maher may have gotten some bipartisan praise for his fight with Ben Affleck on radical Islam, but the student body at the University of California Berkeley is not happy with the liberal comedian.
Maher is scheduled to speak at the school’s fall commencement, but his controversial comments have sparked a Change.org petition to remove him as the keynote speaker.
The petition reads:
The petition was created by Marium Navid, who is backed by the Middle Eastern, Muslim and South Asian Coalition (MEMSA), and Khwaja Ahmed, an active MEMSA member, according to the Daily Californian.
It has gathered more than 2,300 signatures as of Tuesday morning.
Maher has long been famous for his bold and typically offensive comments on a range of topics. But his comments on Islam have apparently struck a cord even with the far left.
“It’s the only religion that acts like the mafia that will f—ing kill you if you say the wrong thing,” Maher said on his HBO show in early October.
He defended his statements after hearing the backlash saying, “I mean, do the people arguing with us, would they really open a lesbian art gallery in Ramallah? [Laughs] Or Karachi? Or Cairo? I don’t know if they would back up what they’re saying with actions. We are not bigoted people. On the contrary, we’re trying to stand up for the principles of liberalism! And so, y’know, I think we’re just saying we need to identify illiberalism wherever we find it in the world, and not forgive it because it comes from [a group] people perceive as a minority.”
Navid said that he wants the school to reconsider the Maher speech because of the high profile of the Berkeley commencement.
“It’s not an issue of freedom of speech, it’s a matter of campus climate,” Navid told the Daily Californian. “The First Amendment gives him the right to speak his mind, but it doesn’t give him the right to speak at such an elevated platform as the commencement. That’s a privilege his racist and bigoted remarks don’t give him.”
Claire Chiara, president of Berkeley College Republicans, told the paper that though she disagrees with Maher, she has no issue with his confirmation as commencement speaker.
“He’s a very prominent public figure, and I’m certain that he’s not going to treat a commencement speech at a prestigious university the way he treats his talk show,” she said.
Recent graduation seasons have seen numerous commencement speakers either pull out of or be removed from planned appearances. Brandeis University withdrew its offer of an honorary degree to the women’s rights activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and IMF chief Christine Lagarde both withdrew from commencement speaking slots amid student and faculty pushback. Conservative George Will has also been protested at multiple universities.
