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The controversy over conservative commentator Ann Coulters planned appearance this week at UC Berkeley took another turn Wednesday when she and her sponsors pulled out even as campus police readied anyway for riot-like demonstrations.

Im so sorry for free speech [being] crushed by thugs, Coulter posted on Twitter in announcing that she had abandoned efforts to find a campus venue where she could speak Thursday.

Its sickening when a radical thuggish institution like Berkeley can so easily snuff out the cherished American right to free speech, she added.

Berkeley administrators and police countered that their first concern was safety in the face of increasingly violent demonstrations at the famously liberal university.

Coulter had been invited by two student groups to speak on immigration policy as a counterpoint to a Clinton administration advisor. The address became a campus-freedoms rallying point for conservative groups when administrators first canceled Coulters visit, then rescheduled it to an unpopular date.

But even without a high-profile headliner such as Coulter, UC Berkeley Police Capt. Alex Yao said, authorities expect extremists to arrive on campus to have violence against each other. He said students should expect a heavy police presence Thursday and a very, very low tolerance of violence.

Among those contemplating their own Berkeley events on Thursday were Proud Boys founder Gavin McInnes and Canadian alt-right blogger Lauren Southern, according to statements Southern made.

Administrators cited unspecified threats of violence in limiting Coulter to a daytime engagement off the main campus. The Berkeley campus and adjacent downtown has been the scene of three violent clashes since February between alt-right demonstrators and white nationalists on one side and anti-fascist and anarchist groups on the other.

Coulter had pledged to show up anyway, even contemplating an outdoor address. But she discarded that idea Wednesday in the face of continued threats, the universitys refusal to find her a building and the withdrawal of her sponsors.

The president of one student group, BridgeCal, said the escalating rhetoric surrounding what was intended as discourse contributed to the groups decision to rescind its invitation.

Ann herself is using this a little to her advantage to engage in the test of free speech, said Pranav Jandhyala. He said he found Coulters recent public comments unnecessarily provocative.

We cant endorse an event like that, Jandhyala said.

The other student host, Berkeley College Republicans, also withdrew its invitation but said the issue always had been about free speech.

The group and Coulters well-funded financial sponsor, the Virginia-based Young Americas Foundation, filed a federal free speech lawsuit Monday accusing the university of using security concerns as a guise to censor conservative viewpoints. College Republicans President Troy Worden said he would pursue the litigation.

The fact that we couldnt even get a speaker on campus, thats our primary concern, he said.

The College Republicans in February sought to host right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos, but the event was canceled when hundreds of demonstrators swarmed the venue including some in masks who tore down barricades and smashed windows.

The group also invited controversial writer David Horowitz to speak this month but withdrew the request, citing poor attendance expected at the time and location the university required.

The American Civil Liberties Union raised its own concerns Wednesday. National Legal Director David Cole said he was troubled by how threats of violence effectively silenced Coulter.

If the government gets to decide which speech counts as hate speech, the powers that be may later feel free to censor any speech they dont like, Cole said in a statement. For the future of our democracy, we must protect bigoted speech from government censorship.

On college campuses, that means that the best way to combat hateful speech is through counter-speech, vigorous and creative protest, and debate, not threats of violence or censorship.

UC Berkeley Chancellor Nicholas Dirks released a public statement that stressed the universitys commitment to free speech and attributed the risk of mayhem and free speech challenges to outside groups.

This is a university, not a battlefield, Dirks said. The strategies necessary to address these evolving threats are also evolving, but the simplistic view of some that our police department can simply step in and stop violent confrontations whenever they occur ignores reality.

Berkeley police have arrested 21 individuals and have warrants for an additional 11 suspected of being involved in the violent demonstrations in March and April, a spokesman said.

City Police Chief Andrew Greenwood said officers are dealing with combatants eager to fight, and any use of force might escalate the violence.

We are rightly expected to not get swept into the volatility of the crowd, he wrote in a report to the Berkeley City Council.

Coulter is still traveling to the Bay Area. She is scheduled to appear Friday at a sold-out fundraiser for the Republican Party of Stanislaus County.

Organizer Janice Keating said the party chose Coulter because of her ability to draw a crowd. Demonstrations were not expected, Keating said, but were prepared as best we can be.

The organization has hired private security to bolster the efforts of the Modesto Police Department.

Los Angeles Times staff writer Teresa Watanabe contributed to this report.

paige.stjohn@latimes.com

Twitter: @paigestjohn

ALSO:

Ann Coulter, free speech and UC Berkeley: How a talk became a political bombshell

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Editorial: Let Ann Coulter speak

UPDATES:

7:35 p.m.: This article was updated with Coulters decision to cancel her appearance and a comment from the ACLU.

11:35 a.m.: This article was updated with details about another student group withdrawing its invitation to commentator Ann Coulter and comments from Janice Keating of the Republican Party of Stanislaus County.

10:45 a.m.: This article was updated with comments from Pranav Jandhyala, president of the student group BridgeCal.

10 a.m.: This article was updated with comments from UC Berkeley spokesman Dan Mogulof and UC Berkeley Chancellor Nicholas Dirks.

This article was originally published at 9:30 a.m.

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Ann Coulter says she will not speak at Berkeley: 'Its a sad ...

Rich Lowry, Syndicated columnist 5:35 p.m. CT April 30, 2017

Rich Lowry(Photo: Special to The Clarion-Ledger)

Because the California National Guard couldnt be mobilized in time, Ann Coulter had to withdraw from giving a speech at Berkeley.

If you take it seriously, thats the import of UC Berkeleys decision to do everything it could to keep the conservative provocateur from speaking on campus over safety concerns.

If somebody brings weapons, theres no way to block off the site, or to screen them, the chancellor of the university said of Coulters plan to go ahead and speak at an open-air forum after the school canceled a scheduled talk.

The administrator made it sound as if Coulter would have been about as safe at Berkeley as she would have been addressing a meeting of MS-13 and he might have been right.

We have entered a new, much less metaphorical phase of the campus-speech wars. Were beyond hissing, or disinviting. Were no longer talking about the hecklers veto, but the masked-thugs-who-will-burn-trash-cans-and-assault-you-and-your-entourage veto.

Coulter is a rhetorical bomb thrower, which is an entirely different thing than being a real bomb thrower. Coulter has never tried to shout down a speaker she doesnt like. She hasnt thrown rocks at cops. She isnt an arsonist. She offers up provocations that she gamely defends in almost any setting with arguments that people are free to accept, or reject, or attempt to correct.

In other words, in the Berkeley context, shes the liberal. She believes in the efficacy of reason and in the free exchanges of ideas. Her enemies do not.

Indeed, the budding fascism that progressives feared in the Trump years is upon us, although not in the form they expected. It is represented by the black-clad shock troops of the anti-fa movement who are violent, intolerant and easily could be mistaken for the street fighters of the extreme right in 1930s Europe. That they call themselves anti-fascist speaks to a colossal lack of self-awareness.

It is incumbent on all responsible progressives to reject this movement, and just as important the broader effort to suppress controversial speech. This is why former Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Deans comments about hate speech not being protected by the First Amendment were so alarming. In Deans defense, he had no idea what he was talking about, but he was effectively making himself the respectable voice of the rock throwers.

Deans view was that Berkeley is within its rights to make the decision that it puts their campus in danger if they have her there. This justification, advanced by the school itself, is profoundly wrongheaded.

It is an inherently discriminatory standard, since the Berkeley College Republicans arent given to smashing windows and throwing things when an extreme lefty shows up on campus, which is a near-daily occurrence.

It would deny Coulter something she has a right to do (speak her mind on the campus of a public university) in reaction to agitators doing things they dont have a right to do (destroy property, among other acts of mayhem).

It would suppress an intellectual threat, i.e., a dissenting viewpoint, and reward a physical threat. This is perverse.

For now there is a consensus in favor of free speech in the country that is especially entrenched in the judiciary. The anti-fa and other agitators arent going to change that anytime soon. But they could effectively make it too burdensome for certain speakers to show up on campus, and over time more Democrats like Dean could rationalize this fact by arguing that so-called hate speech doesnt deserve First Amendment protection.

So, it isnt enough for schools like UC Berkeley to say that they value free speech, yet do nothing to punish disrupters and throw up their hands at the task of providing security for controversial speakers. If everyone else gets safe space at UC Berkeley, Coulter deserves one. If the anti-fa are willing to attack free speech through illegal force, the authorities should be willing to defend it by lawful force.

Heck, if necessary, call out the National Guard.

Email Rich Lowry at comments.lowry@)nationalreview.com.

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In Berkeley context, Ann Coulter is the liberal - Jackson Clarion Ledger

New York Post

Berkeley students sue university for canceling Ann Coulter's visit New York Post BERKELEY, Calif. Ann Coulter is now at the center of a civil rights lawsuit filed Monday against the University of California, Berkeley, by students who say the school is violating their right to free speech by canceling the conservative pundit's ... and more »

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Berkeley students sue university for canceling Ann Coulter's visit - New York Post

But walk around Cal Berkeley for a day and you won't find thugs. Many students will tell you they support Coulter's right to speak, even if they disagree with her. The university should have found a way to make it happen, they'll say.

Sitting under the 300-foot-high Campanile clock tower enjoying a sandwich, Harmanjit Sodhi, 20, told CNN that she was liberal growing up in Tracy, California. But Berkeley's leftism pushed her to the center.

Many of her classmates are quick to label someone a bigot or "sh**ty person" if they divert even slightly from core left-wing values, she said.

"I don't like the fact (Coulter's speech) was canceled because at the end of the day, just because she's a Republican or has views most students disagree with doesn't mean her views aren't valid," said the junior studying molecular and cellular biology.

At the same time, Sodhi, like many students and faculty, feels Coulter's speech was a publicity stunt, aimed at painting the nation's cradle of free speech as intolerant.

"Everybody's speaking, and nobody's listening," said junior Guutaa Regassa as he worked on his laptop in Sproul Plaza, the site of many free-speech battles in the 1960s. "These are ideas, but we're also human beings. I think people attack the human being when they need to attack the idea."

They don't call it "Bezerkeley" without reason. Students have gotten rowdy here for decades, and the school's history of protest and political activity has sparked tangible change across the nation -- especially in the realm of free speech.

"When something related to free speech happens here, it gets the attention of the national press," said Robert Price, the associate vice chancellor for research, who has been teaching at Berkeley since 1970.

As for the recent violence, Price and several Berkeley students believe that students were only minimally involved in the melees. They suspect hate groups and Bay Area anti-fascists used these events to wage violence against each other.

"Obviously, they did that because Berkeley's a symbol," Price said.

But the political science professor is disturbed by what he feels is an aversion to the free exchange of ideas, which flouts the victories for which so many in the free speech movement of the 1960s fought and sacrificed.

Students back then appreciated that universities were supposed to make them uncomfortable, he said. They engaged in heated debates in Sproul Plaza. Price called it a "feast of intellectual combat," and no topic was off limits. Even Communists could be found in the plaza arguing among themselves -- Maoism versus Stalinism and so on.

Knowing this history firsthand, Price finds it disturbing that some students today want safe spaces and trigger warnings to fend off speech they find objectionable.

"To say it violates the First Amendment is true, but the threat is larger than that. If (students) believe something strongly, that belief ought to be embedded in something they can defend intellectually, and you only get that if you're challenged," he said.

"If you're so psychologically weak that the expression of ideas is going to traumatize you, you shouldn't be at a university."

Price remembers being a graduate student in October 1964 when police converged on Sproul Plaza to arrest Jack Weinberg for violating the school's ban on political activity on campus.

Some, including Weinberg, actually mounted the police car's roof to deliver statements on free speech. The students remained in the plaza for 32 hours, until charges were dropped and Weinberg was released.

In a phone interview, Weinberg told CNN he felt the university was "ham-fisted" about the Coulter speech. He doesn't agree with Coulter, but he also doesn't agree with those who would retreat to safe spaces to avoid her message, nor with bullies "with no principles of their own" who would use her speech as an opportunity to engage in violence.

"My hope is she does not get prevented from speaking, and my hope is that thousands of people come out, just like during the free speech movement, and protest her message," he said Wednesday.

Luise Valentin, a senior from Copenhagen, Denmark, said the university is certainly not above debate. While she cheekily says UC Berkeley students "are very much for diversity and free speech as long as you agree with us," she says the recent violence is anything but typical.

She has a class with public policy professor Robert Reich, a Democrat and political commentator who served in the Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton administrations. After the most recent violence at Berkeley, Valentin said, Reich canceled his lecture for the day and instead engaged in a debate with former GOP Sen. Alan Simpson of Wyoming.

The purpose was "to show you could be open-minded and friendly with each other and still disagree," the 22-year-old said.

Many students say they aren't worried about classmates becoming violent if right-wing pundits deliver on promises to speak in Sproul Plaza. Ryan Kelley-Cahill, 19, a freshman from nearby Alameda, said he sees students civilly debating there every day over animal rights, foreign oil, Palestine and myriad other issues.

"The culture on campus, it's not like there are violent people going around trying to suppress people's views," the business and political science major said.

But those fringe elements -- the anti-fascists, the neo-Nazis -- concern some students who told CNN they think school administrators were trying to protect the campus by rescheduling Coulter's speech.

Jacob Slater-Chin, 24, a graduate student in multimedia, feels otherwise. Conservative views can be freely aired on campus, said Slater-Chin, adding that he was "kind of interested in what Ann had to say." He is particularly annoyed, he said, by the black-clad anti-fascists, who he couldn't differentiate from the hate groups fighting during the Yiannopoulos speech and Trump rally.

"They're kind of, ironically, being Nazis," he said. "It doesn't really help your argument when you're literally beating up people."

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Ann Coulter controversy tests Berkeley's free speech ...

Demonstrators hold signs and flags on April 27, 2017, in Berkeley, Calif. Marcio Jose Sanchez / AP

An on-campus demonstration with speakers both for and against Coulter broke up in the early afternoon. But demonstrators continued to mass west of the campus in Martin Luther King Jr. Civic Center Park. Some were vocal supporters of President Trump, saying they came to back Coulter's First Amendment rights. Others described themselves as progressives, who came to oppose what they said was the author's divisive rhetoric.

By late afternoon Thursday, all that had broken out between the pro- and anti-Coulter forces were a few shouting matches and many more spirited arguments. But tensions remained high, in part because some protesters came dressed in helmets, masks and other conflict-ready gear and in part because of Berkeley's recent history. Two disagreements over conservative speakers slated to appear on campus in recent weeks have erupted into violence.

Appearing on Fox News's "Tucker Carlson Tonight" Thursday evening, Coulter continued to chide Berkeley authorities, mocking a police administrator who said Coulter couldn't have been adequately protected if she showed up this week.

"Well, I don't know, call a cop," Coulter said to Carlson. "What's your job? It's like you're on a plane that is about to take off and the pilot says 'How am I supposed to get this thing across the country?' That's your job!"

Thursday's standoff grew out of a plan by two campus organizations to have Coulter speak on campus. Campus officials denied the request, saying that they had not been given enough time to find an appropriate time and place for the appearance by the columnist and television personality. They said they needed a venue that could be "secured," in order to protect students, guests and Coulter herself.

But Coulter and her would-be hosts, including the Berkeley College Republicans, said the university's fears were overblown and that Thursday's mass police presence proved that they could have been ready for any eventuality.

Coulter insisted that her appearance had been cancelled not merely postponed and claimed an irony that the action had been taken on a campus where the Free Speech Movement was born in the 1960s. "It's sickening when a radical thuggish institution like Berkeley can so easily snuff out the cherished American right to free speech," she said in one of a string of provocative tweets.

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But even as she officially pulled out of the Berkeley event Wednesday, Coulter claimed more attention by suggesting in an email to the Associated Press she might show up on campus anyway.

"I'm not speaking. But I'm going to be near there, so I might swing by to say hello to my supporters who have flown in from all around the country," Coulter wrote. "I thought I might stroll around the graveyard of the First Amendment."

Slams on the university administration continued Thursday, with the Berkeley College Republicans also claiming that Berkeley's attempt to delay the event until next week amounted to shunning Coulter for her political views. Naweed Tahmas of the Berkeley College Republicans said that police were "doing a fantastic job right now" in showing they could keep the peace.

He called the action in redirecting Coulter to another date "a poor precedent for a university, an academic institution where freedom of speech should be championed and there should be an open flow of ideas and an open dialogue."

But university leaders said the proof that they were not blocking Coulter because of her conservative views was made clear by their invitation for her to come to the campus as early as May 2.

Mogulof, assistant vice chancellor for public affairs at Berkeley, said the campus was locked in a "tension" between two imperatives enabling free speech and protecting students and others.

"Our commitment to the First Amendment, to free speech, is non negotiable," he said. "But we can't turn a blind eye to the realities beyond the walls of this campus. And that reality includes individuals and organizations who are willing to do violence and willing to use the university as a battleground."

Had she appeared in Berkeley Thursday, Coulter told the Fox channel's Carlson, she would have spoken about the needed to secure America's borders. She chided President Trump and Republicans for not pushing ahead this week with their earlier demand for initial funding for a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Coulter had

"He's the commander in chief! He said he'd build a wall," Coulter wrote. "If he can't do that, Trump is finished, the Republican Party is finished, and the country is finished."

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Threats of Violence, Then Calm, as Ann Coulter Is Berkeley No-Show - NBCNews.com