Police questioned over restraint in Berkeley riot that cancelled Breitbart editor’s speech

‘I am saddened but not surprised by the president’s tweet, ‘ says Ronald Cohen, an atmospheric chemist who directs the university’s atmospheric science centre.

President Trump has threatened to take away federal funding from one of the US’s top research universities, shocking researchers inside and outside of that institution.

Protesters could be seen shouting, destroying property, setting fires, and smashing windows around the university campus.

A former Clinton administration official has launched a stunning new charge over who was responsible for the riots at UC Berkeley that erupted among left-wing radicals when Breitbart News editor Milo Yiannopoulos was supposed to speak, shutting down the event.

Yiannopoulos was invited by the campus Republican club for a talk but had to be evacuated from the building two hours before it was scheduled to begin.

Following Trump’s tweet, Yiannopoulos has heralded himself as the “catalyst” for change. Administrators chose to cancel Yiannopoulos’s speech about two hours before the event.

Dirks sent an additional open letter today, decrying the violence that took place Wednesday night and saying that the university went to “extraordinary lengths” to ensure the event could occur amid the contentious environment. Right now, the federal agencies that oversee the implementation of civil rights laws on campus have effectively told schools that in order to qualify for continued federal funding, they must use a broad definition of harassment that violates students’ speech rights.

The Free Speech Movement started at UC Berkeley in 1964 after students protested en masse when administrators tried to restrict their political activities on campus. “But said, ‘free speech is most important thing we stand for.’ And it was these outsiders who caused police to come in and cancel it”.

In a hyper politicized country, it may not matter to a protester, convinced of the absolute evil of Yiannopoulos, that violating the very precepts that allow their campuses to function – and to be the envy of the world – is wrong. “They simply will not allow any speaker on campus, even someone as silly and harmless and gay as me, to have their voice heard”, Mr. Yiannopoulos says.

Late last month, outside a scheduled speech by Yiannopoulos at the University of Washington in Seattle, an anti-racist protester was shot by a Yiannopoulos fan who had tried to provoke the protesters throughout the evening, according to Hatewatch.

UC Berkeley said it had prepared security measures following what had happened at Yiannopoulos’ previous events.

If you fear autocracy (which we suddenly do), then behaving like thugs to stifle free speech is a really half-baked strategy to deploy in protest of aspiring autocrats. We are all members of the same society, and must accept that people will hold views deeply divergent from our own; and we must acknowledge their right to espouse those views.