The University of California, Berkeley took it on the chin recently for refusing Ann Coulter permission to speak there. We’re not talking about Leszek Kolakowski, who lectured at the University of Warsaw in the early- to middle-20th century and later at Yale, Berkeley and Oxford, and was expelled from the Communist Party in 1968.
Coulter is nothing more than a political hack who spews venom from between a forked tongue and long pointy teeth. Berkeley is right not to allow hate speech to substitute for learning. U.C. Berkeley is an institution of learning, not a forum for political hate speech, the arbitrariness of which is astounding. Students missed nothing by missing her.
But freedom of speech is not the issue. A lecture worthy of the reputation of the institution is the issue. What students might gain by listening to that lecture is the issue. She can do no more than to harden young minds into a sclerotic version of her own frenzied extremism.
Coulter is a purveyor of political pornography. Her product is available in numerous bookstores and on political comedy shows. A university is a strange place in which to seek it. Berkeley’s rejection of it should not surprise or outrage anyone.
