UC Berkeley Protests

As a California citizen, I can tell you with full certainty that we are not crazy liberals that hate conservatives and Donald Trump and free speech. We're just not. Californians are typically very respectful of political activism and diversity within views. We're laid-back like that. So the riots happening in the town of Berkeley, California as a result of cancelled speakers, are really intriguing to me.

A recent CNN article lays out how the lines get blurred with First Amendment rights and public institutions such as UC Berkeley. If a speaker is invited to campus, the things they speak on or demonstrate cannot be regulated by the university, as it could obviously lead to discrimination. If the university invites conservative political speakers to their campus, the floor is their's and they can speak on whatever and whomever they like. The matter of student protests, however, makes things a little complicated. If the students choose to block a speaker from coming to campus, constitutional action (specifically the First Amendment right to free speech) cannot be taken against them, as they are private citizens. Its the state action doctrine, established in the Civil Rights cases of 1965, personified. If the kids don't want the speaker on campus, they can protest it, as the school is technically an institution of the government, and the speaker can do nothing to stop these kids from what they're doing (so long as it's peaceful) because they are not representative of the government, they're just regular college kids.

A school cancelling the speaker's event due to the student protests could technically be brought up in a legal case, but the main motivation for Berkeley cancelling the events that they have are because of safety concerns. Both the safety of their students, and the safety of the speakers are in jeopardy when angry students start shouting on the quad, so shutting down such events are usually the safest bet after trying to non-violently end the protests with security/police enforcement.

So UC Berkeley is not a campus full of liberal hippies that don't want conservative speech to reach their fragile ears, they just know some speakers would not be a popular candidate and respect the safety of those on their campus. It's not a violation of the First Amendment, it's just listening to the people.

The link to the CNN article: http://www.cnn.com/2017/04/27/politics/first-amendment-explainer-trnd/