“Speech is not violence. The Left conflates the two in order to justify its own violent reactions to differing points of view.”
Michael Knowles
“I go to UC Berkeley…”
Usually, when a Berkeley student utters these words to those who aren’t lucky enough to attend our university, they are met with praise about how they should be so proud to attend such an esteemed institution. Some may even bring up the storied history of our students standing up for free speech. Reminders of this pivotal moment in Berkeley history are omnipresent on campus, from the Free Speech Movement Cafe to the always bustling environment of Sproul Plaza. However, as we recently celebrated the 60th anniversary of the Free Speech Movement, the movement seems more like an empty memory lingering on campus than an actual dynamic, living movement coursing through campus veins.
In fact, the legacy of the Free Speech Movement is not just empty; it’s laughable. This is demonstrated in the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression’s (FIRE) college free speech rankings, which ranks UC Berkeley 225th overall for free speech and is assigned a “below average” rating for free speech culture. FIRE recently hosted a Student Development Summit in Orlando, Florida, which I was lucky enough to attend. Excitement coursed through me as I prepared to discuss free speech issues on campus with my peers from colleges all across America. Coming from a public university bound by the First Amendment, let alone the home of the Free Speech Movement itself, I expected to have a far better reputation for free speech culture than many of my peers who attended private liberal arts colleges notorious for stringent speech codes.
Speaking to the crowd of 60 or so students, I uttered the words, “I go to UC Berkeley,” preparing to talk about the Free Speech Movement and its evolution. Immediately after I spoke those words, I was not met with the usual oohs and ahs I get when I say I attend UC Berkeley. I was met with muffled laughter from students excited to hear about the next infringement on free speech I had suffered from an overtly liberal and intolerant student population. I knew Berkeley had a stereotype of being a liberal bastion consumed with protests every day, but I had no idea our reputation for silencing and self-censorship was that bad.
I cannot tell you how many times people have come up to me asking me how I can be a conservative at Berkeley, but this conference was an eye-opening experience for my perception of Berkeley’s free speech culture. Since then, I have been pestered with questions about my experience as a Berkeley Conservative and about the hostile environment for free speech on my campus. I explained that while we are a public university bound by the First Amendment and, thus, cannot legally restrict speech (even hate speech) on an institutional level, there was a deeper free speech problem occurring that could not be solved through purely legal measures. Berkeley suffered from a loss of free speech culture, not from free speech legalities. The loss of free speech culture was not so much an administrative backlash to free speech but a student-led intolerance towards hearing heterodox views. This student-led resistance was exemplified by an event that occurred as I was enjoying my time in the Sunshine State. The Berkeley College Republicans are often a point of contention for our very liberal student body and are no stranger to backlash to their events. However, an event involving a notorious Daily Wire-affiliated speaker, a misunderstanding over a flier, and a fairly benign Holy War lecture sparked outrage among the Berkeley student government, the Associated Students of the University of California (ASUC).
Michael Knowles Comes to Berkeley
On September 23, the Berkeley College Republicans posted to their Instagram account that Michael Knowles, a reporter for Conservative news outlet The Daily Wire, would be coming to speak at UC Berkeley on October 7. With it being the one-year anniversary of the October 7 Hamas terrorist attacks against innocent Israeli citizens, one would likely expect that Knowles would speak on the issue. However, when BCR posted a flier for the event on October 3 with the headline “Eradicate Transgenderism,” one could reasonably assume that Knowles might touch on the topic of transgenderism.
However, one might also be slightly worried if this flier were calling for the eradication of transgender people. While it is quite obvious that the flier is incendiary and likely meant to generate a reaction, there is some misunderstanding involved if someone jumps to the conclusion that this flier was calling for the genocide of transgender individuals. Knowles has used this phrase many times before and has responded to the same backlash from people claiming he wants to eradicate transgender people. To him and many people who subscribe to his views, the term “transgenderism” (with an emphasis on the “ism” part, often associated with ideology) is about an ideology, not actual people. Transgenderism, to them, is an ideology that promotes the idea that gender is not what is assigned at birth, gender can be fluid, and anyone can change their gender at any time.
As transgender issues are still fairly new to the American public, it is important for people to keep in mind (especially Berkeley liberals living in a Berkeley bubble) that there still are conversations to be had on an issue that upends many pillars of our society. For example, a vast majority of Americans do not believe that gender surgery should be performed on minors, and 69% of Americans think that transgender athletes should only be able to compete with their birth gender. By shutting down the conversation around transgenderism as an ideology, there is no room for Americans to have open, honest debate on a recent shift in society that, in many ways, can completely shift how we think about societal structures. Thus, if Mr. Knowles was here to speak about transgenderism, then the solution to that should be more speech from people who disagree with him in order to have a civil debate over a quandary that must still be hashed out. However, when Knowles’s event came around, he proceeded to deliver a mundane history lecture on holy wars to a crowd of students eager to listen. Not a hint of the topic of transgenders or transgenderism was uttered. The fairly benign educational event went smoothly, and students peacefully came and went from the event, with no calls for genocide being promulgated. One would think that an event less theatrical than many UC Berkeley history lectures would go on without backlash. However, the ASUC took it into their own hands to ensure that Berkeley College Republicans would be held “accountable.”
A Resolution for a Phantom Issue
On October 25, almost three weeks after the event had taken place, ASUC Senators Ayden Reading and Carlos González took to social media to denounce the event where transgender students felt unsafe walking by the line of students “gathering to discuss trans eradication” and claimed the speaker “sought to promote the eradication of transgender individuals” at the event. In the same post, the pair of senators announced they were introducing a resolution to “hold the Berkeley Republican Club accountable” and “prohibit such events.”
As UC Berkeley is a public university bound by the First Amendment, I was immediately alarmed by the post that seemed like an Orwellian attempt to prohibit BCR events and give the ASUC tremendous Big Brother-like power to deem which events pose a “true threat” to students on campus. I bring up the concept of a “true threat” as it is one of the only exceptions to free speech in the law. Nearly all speech, including “Hate Speech,” is allowed under the law and at public universities, no matter how offensive it is. However, there are legal exceptions for speech that poses a “true threat,” like inciting violence or illegal activity.
If, at the event in question, Knowles had told the crowd to go out and incite violence against all the transgender students on campus, then there would be a legal basis to ban such an event by Knowles on the UC Berkeley campus. However, Knowles did not do that. Knowles and the event demonstrated nothing of what the ASUC senators had alleged had happened. Additionally, Knowles had explained many times before what he meant by eradicating the ideology of transgenderism. So, while one could be alarmed by the original intentions of the post, we should also be alarmed that the post targets a phantom issue that never actually occurred on the UC Berkeley campus that day.
I spoke with Senators Reading and González to inquire more about their intentions with the resolution, what the implications would be should it be passed, and why they felt the need to try to thread a needle through a very specific and slippery exception to free speech, especially when the said cause for such a resolution (the event was the main target in the post, not the BCR flier) never really happened. I asked if either of the Senators had even watched the event in question, to which they responded in the negative.
When confronted with the reality that their post’s reasoning for such a resolution was hollow, they immediately turned their attention to the flier BCR had posted with the phrase “eradicate transgenderism,” saying that it posed a true threat to transgender students, so such a flier should not be allowed. However, I had to remember the reason I was speaking with them, which was that the resolution in the post was to ban events, not fliers. So, if there was no problem with the event, then what would such a resolution do in this situation?
Senators Reading and González pushed back on the notion that they were trying to “ban events” or ban BCR as a club on campus. They implied that such a resolution would require the Finance Committee to “ask more questions” and do further research on proposed speaker events, and if such events were found to “intend to spread hateful rhetoric that poses a threat to students,” then events would not be allowed to reserve spaces or receive funding from the ASUC.
I am skeptical that expanded inquiry into proposed events before they even occur will be effective, as it requires a currently unclear judge to determine the content of an event before it would even happen. This should also alarm students as being found “guilty” by an informal decider of what is counted as unprotected speech (only very extreme circumstances count as unprotected) before that speech even occurs is a slippery slope for encroachment upon rights to freedom of speech.
Threats to Free Speech Culture at UC Berkeley
If this resolution passes and certain events, especially those hosted by BCR, are blocked, there is bound to be lawsuits arguing barriers to speech. Again, UC Berkeley is a public institution, bound by the First Amendment, and required by law to protect freedom of speech. But while there are institutional protections that guarantee the right for campus organizations to host whomever they choose, what is most troubling about this issue is that it highlights Berkeley’s main problem regarding freedom of speech.
UC Berkeley does not suffer from a problem of institutional protections from free speech, but it suffers from a loss of free speech culture, in that students themselves are often the main boogeymen to an environment of free speech. Students who are not part of the majority opinion often cite feeling like they have to censor their views to get by, and on the rare occasion they do speak out, they are much too frequently met with yelling and violence.
We have seen this culture in action far too much recently. In 2017, right-wing activist Milo Yiannopoulos was invited to speak on campus. Just before the event began, violent protests from opposition parties erupted, causing $100,000 worth of property damage, two BCR members attacked during an interview, and at least six people injured by masked protestors, which included members of ANTIFA.
In August 2022, almost a quarter of the student organizations at Berkeley Law School adopted a Law Students for Justice in Palestine policy that banned the invitation of speakers or meeting attendees who were Zionists. Lawyers fighting the ban cited an example of a Jewish student draped in an Israeli flag, exercising his First Amendment right, getting assaulted with a metal water bottle as an example of the hostility such a speech-stifling policy has created.
This past February, a speaker event featuring an Israeli attorney organized by various Jewish student groups was shut down after nearly 200 anti-Israel protestors stormed the building, breaking windows and injuring multiple students. Additionally, anti-Semitic slurs were yelled by some protestors, as well as chants of “long live the intifada.” Adding fuel to the fire, it seems as if this violent protest was incited directly by the “Bears for Palestine” student organization Instagram account, which posted to its social media telling its followers in regard to the event “shut it down.”
What is so startling about each of these examples is that they are models of how students themselves can stifle the freedom of expression. Even more insulting is that these examples are a complete aberration from the efforts of Berkeley’s famous Free Speech Movement, where students gathered 60 years ago to promote students’ rights to be able to freely and safely express their opinions. However, in today’s hyper-partisan environment, it seems as if a sizable chunk of Berkeley students only favor free speech when it is speech they agree with. However, if (grown adult) students are confronted with speech they disagree with, past events have shown that enough students believe that violent measures are justified to stifle others’ rights to safe freedom of expression. College should be the place where students go to have their views challenged, not reaffirmed. If students want to be shielded from controversial speech and believe that they deserve to go about their adult life without being offended, then they should go back to Kindergarten. The real world is full of people with very controversial opinions, and their opinions will not change if they are silenced. In fact, silencing controversial opinions will likely make those opinions even more radical. Really, the only solution to speech students don’t like should be more speech and open, respectful debate, not violence or censorship.
Where Do We Go From Here?
It is difficult to prescribe a solution to this problem of sensitivity among Gen Z college students, as there is no silver bullet or immediate solution. As Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt explain in their book The Coddling of the American Mind, a lot of the fragility we see nowadays comes down to parenting. So, to start, parents, please give your high school kids a reading assignment of Coddling and its sequel, Canceling of the American Mind by Lukianoff and Gen Z free speech connoisseur Rikki Schlott.
For students, it is very hard to tell people to simply suck it up and deal with other people’s seemingly outlandish opinions. To start, I would say we need to start getting to know the person before getting to know their politics. Then, once we have built trust with one another, we can have more productive conversations with people who want to talk about politics because we know more about the other person’s family, background, and upbringing that have led them to believe the things they believe. Or even better, join student organizations that are founded on listening, understanding, and positive discourse, even when you disagree. BridgeUSA is a fantastic organization for this. Founded at UC Berkeley in response to the violence surrounding the Milo Yianoppoulos event and with over 60 chapters on college campuses all across America, BridgeUSA is an organization perfect for students who want to feel open to discuss from whatever perspective they hold. The Foundation of Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), which I talked about earlier, is another great organization for students to get involved in to bring free speech tools to their campus.
Lastly, student leaders, student government, and student organizations must do better to ensure everyone, even those with opinions they vehemently disagree with, should face no barriers to making their voices heard. The ASUC plan puts further barriers on speech, especially towards those student groups who are in the minority and likely need to be protected more. In fact, if safety were a top priority, there should be more done about preventing physically violent protests at such speaker events rather than censoring the speech itself. After all, speech is not violence, but reactions to speech that people disagree with or are offended by can turn violent if free speech culture is no longer prioritized by our society.
Featured image: https://www.berkeley.edu/free-speech-60/
Comments are closed.