Pavlich: Bogus campus safety concerns

Another semester, another well-known conservative has been kept off campus because university administrators can’t be bothered with asking liberal students to behave themselves.

The latest controversy comes at the University of California, Berkeley, where pro-Trump firebrand Ann Coulter has been told she cannot speak. Why? Her safety is allegedly at risk.

The university is being sued by Young America’s Foundation, the sponsor of Coulter’s event. Coulter plans to speak anyway.

{mosads}“On Monday, April 24, 2017, Young America’s Foundation (YAF) fulfilled its promise to file a lawsuit, in federal court, against the University of California, Berkeley for the University’s unconstitutional suppression of free speech on campus,” Young America’s Foundation said in a statement. “The University cites, as its reason for canceling the lecture, its ‘high-profile speakers’ policy.

“In recent weeks, administrators have used this unwritten policy to cancel events featuring two conservative speakers for YAF—Ms. Coulter and David Horowitz. During the same time period, administrators permitted events featuring leftists Vicente Fox Quesada, former President of Mexico, and Maria Echaveste, former advisor and White House Deputy Chief of Staff to President Clinton, to proceed without interference. This discrepancy is alarming,” the statement continues.

The Berkeley College Republicans have also issued a lawsuit against the school on the same grounds.

University of California spokeswoman Dianne Klein has responded, again, by arguing that the rescheduling is about safety.

“The allegation contained in the complaint filed by Young America’s Foundation that Ms. Coulter is being prohibited from speaking because of her conservative views is untrue,” Klein said. “UC Berkeley has been working to accommodate a mutually agreeable time for Ms. Coulter’s visit — which has not yet been scheduled — and remains committed to doing so. The campus seeks to ensure that all members of the Berkeley and larger community — including Ms. Coulter herself — remain safe during such an event.”

Nobody should be buying this excuse. As noted in both lawsuits, high-profile people come to Berkeley and other universities around the country all of the time. Outside police departments are asked to pitch in if necessary, because it’s their job to do so. They are easily accommodated with campus security and aren’t asked to repeatedly reschedule events. They also happen to be ideologically aligned with the left.

“Security concerns,” room changes, extreme rules about advertising for an event, etc., are regular tools used by campus liberals to either cancel or disrupt conservative speaker events. When they aren’t outright proclaiming an event is too much of a security risk, they switch the location of events at the last minute. Then, nothing is done to make sure students eager to hear a different perspective can find the new space.

This happened to a few years ago when I was invited by conservative students at the University of Arizona to give a talk about the Second Amendment. The event was also sponsored by YAF. The location, a campus auditorium booked well in advance, was changed just three hours ahead of start time to a hidden-away classroom. Although students were promised signs would be put up at the original and advertised location, little effort was made by the university to notify people of the change. 

This was all too familiar. When I was a UA student, I was given the ultimate runaround when my student group wanted to bring author and activist David Horowitz to speak on campus. At the time, he had recently written a book featuring some of the country’s most unhinged leftist professors. One of those professors, V. Spike Peterson, taught — and still does — gender and women’s studies at UA.

With just two days’ notice, campus police threatened to shut down our event unless we came up with $500 to pay extra officers. Then, once we scrambled and came up with the funding, they threatened to move the room we had booked weeks in advance. Our fliers on campus were repeatedly torn down.

Despite that, the event was a success and took place on schedule. After the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education sent a sternly worded letter to the university on our behalf, we didn’t pay the extra cash for security. After all, you cannot tax free speech.

“Safety” is a bogus argument regularly used by university officials to keep conservative speakers off of campuses. This isn’t because conservatives are dangerous, but because the left often reverts to violence instead of words when presented with ideas it disagrees with.

The vast majority of people in academia, especially at the administrative level, have so little confidence in their ability to make an argument for their liberal cause, they choose to keep conservatives from making their own case at all. It’s pathetic, cowardly, unconstitutional and completely predictable.

Pavlich is the editor for Townhall.com and a Fox News contributor. The views expressed by this author are their own and are not the views of The Hill.