Free Speech Week teasers feature David Horowitz, Ann Coulter, Steve Bannon and Milo Yiannopoulos. Other speakers announced so far include Pamela Geller, Raheem Kassam and Alex Marlow. Milo himself promises to bring 16 Navy Seals with him as protection. More details are available at http://freespeechweek.com/
David Horowitz
Ann Coulter
Steve Bannon
Milo Yiannopoulos
Open letter from UC Berkeley Faculty, which continues to receive additional signatures.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ISjcd8Suc-Nxs61HxsGiu5NnAPOo8KyK9Zso1MsQ1Rg/edit
BOYCOTT THE ALT-RIGHT @UCBerkeley
September 24-27th
A letter from UCB Faculty to the Campus and Berkeley Community
While there has still not been an official announcement from campus administrators, we are learning that from September 24th to 27th, the University of California at Berkeley will provide a platform to Milo Yiannopoulos, Ann Coulter, Stephen K. Bannon, Breitbart media and their far right audience. A series of explicitly violent Alt-Right, militia and pro-Fascist events are also, again, being scheduled for Civic Center / MLK park in downtown Berkeley on those days.
Once more, signs point towards an escalated and uncontrollable confrontation both on and off campus during these four days. The history of these events has been chilling. Since Inauguration Day, Alt-Right followers have shot someone at the University of Washington, stabbed two people to death on public transport in Portland, stabbed to death a college senior in Maryland, beaten numerous nonviolent protesters at the University of Virginia, and most recently murdered a peaceful protester with an automobile in Charlottesville. Most immediately troubling, given Trump’s decision to end DACA, is that these forces have publicly expressed their intent to specifically target “sanctuary campuses” and disclose the identity of undocumented students. As concerned faculty members, we cannot remain silent while students, staff, colleagues, and fellow community members are threatened.
Therefore, as faculty committed to the safety of our students and our campus, we are calling for a complete boycott of all classes and campus activities while these Alt-Right events are taking place at the very center of UC Berkeley’s campus. As faculty we cannot ask students and staff to choose between risking their physical and mental safety in order to attend class or come to work in an environment of harassment, intimidation, violence, and militarized policing. The reality is that particularly vulnerable populations (DACA students, non-white, gender queer, Muslims, disabled, feminists, and others) have already been harmed, and are reporting increased levels of fear and anxiety about the upcoming events, the increased police presence on our campus, and how all this will impact their lives and their studies.
It is not just physical violence that our campus faces from this media circus. Many of these provocateurs’ most committed audiences are online, and the Breitbart media machine uses that audience to harass, cyberbully, and threaten anyone who speaks out against them. Students and faculty on our campus have already had their lives threatened for speaking out against Milo and his followers. Online threats are real threats, and if we allow this intolerant and bullying version of free speech to take over our campus, then it can only but come at the expense of the free speech rights of the Berkeley community as a whole. In fact, campus safety concerns have already forced the Anthropology Department to cancel a public talk during “free speech week.” This makes clear that the administration understands the imminent threat to campus safety while also revealing that the loud demands of the Alt-Right has the effect of silencing members of our campus community.
We recognize that as a public institution, we are legally bound by the Constitution to allow all viewpoints on campus. However, there are forms of speech that are not protected under the First Amendment. These include speech that presents imminent physical danger and speech that disrupts the university’s mission to educate. Milo, Coulter and Bannon do not come to educate; they and their followers come to humiliate and incite. If the administration insists upon allowing the Alt-Right to occupy the center of our campus for four days to harass, threaten and intimidate us, as they did during Milo’s visit in February, then faculty cannot teach, staff cannot work and students cannot learn.
We refuse to grant the Alt-Right the media spectacle that they so desperately desire. This strategy responds to the concerns voiced in the letter authored by the chairs of the three departments most impacted–Gender & Women’s Studies, African American Studies and Ethnic Studies – and also follows the lead of the SPLC advice to ignore these agitators. As faculty, we reject both the administration’s rhetoric of false equivalency that all speech – including “hate speech” – merits value and respect and also the impulse to see direct confrontation as the only strategy of resistance. A boycott of all campus activities during these days is the only responsible course of action.
Therefore we are calling upon faculty to take the following steps:
The Administration, in failing to halt these events, has left concerned faculty with no other choice than to act to prevent further harm to our community. We urge you to join us in keeping our students and our campus safe by signing on to this call for a campus-wide- boycott.
In Solidarity,
To add your name to this letter, follow this link and sign at the bottom.
Signed:
You may follow the link above for a LONG AND CHANGING LIST of educators.
Image credit: Smith College, President Kathleen McCartney. When Jodi Shaw, a Smith College alum and…
Illustration: Adramelech, from the 1863 edition of Collin de Plancy's Dictionnaire infernal — Source. Remember…
Corporeal prison, by Erik Pevernagie, oil on canvas, 2004 In 2011, then 16-year-old Demitrius Minor…
Filmmaker Chico Colvard, courtesy C-Line Films Filmmaker Chico Colvard accidentally shot his sister in the…
In my ongoing research on Antifascism and NeoFascism in the U.S., I have had contact…
Anyone following the Sarah Braasch "Napping While Black" incident at Yale University has probably heard…