UC Berkeley communist faculty call for campus boycott of Milo Yiannopoulos during 'Free Speech Week'

[Land Of Nuts]

More than 200 UC Berkeley instructors and faculty members are
calling for a shutdown of classes and activities when right-wing
provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos and other conservative speakers
visit campus this month.

In a letter sent to the campus community this week, the faculty
members said that a boycott of Yiannopoulos’ “Free Speech Week”
would protect their students from potentially deadly violence.
The letter cited shootings, stabbings and beatings during
confrontations between the right and left in Seattle, Portland,
Ore., Charlottesville, Va., Maryland and Virginia.

“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 letter
said. “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.”

The Berkeley Patriot student group, which invited the speakers,
has not yet provided needed information or signed the required
contracts for the event, said campus spokesman Dan Mogulof. He
said the group has reserved the Sproul Plaza steps, however.

Berkeley, home of the free speech movement, has become the
national staging ground for confrontations between the right and
left. To guard against violence at the appearance Thursday of
conservative writer Ben Shapiro, the campus has taken
unprecedented security precautions, including erecting a
perimeter fence around six buildings, shutting down main streets
and deploying bomb-sniffing dogs.

The letter, signed by faculty, lecturers and graduate student
instructors, urges colleagues to cancel all classes and tell
their students to stay home. If they choose to hold classes,
they should not penalize their students for not attending, the
letter says, adding that all buildings and departments also
should be closed to protect staff.

Some professors said they will offer online instruction during
Free Speech Week, which starts Sept. 24.

In a text Thursday, Yiannopoulos said he was happy to hear that
faculty might stay away from campus during his appearance.

“The fewer classes taught by the lunatics in the Berkeley asylum
the better,” he wrote. “If all it takes to stop left-wing
indoctrination on campus is me showing up, I’ll happily move
into a tent on Sproul Plaza full time.”

He added that students face more danger from the left than the
right. “The only danger to students is from the far left that
Berkeley has enabled and nurtured,” he said, adding that his
speaker list had been leaked to give left-wing groups such as
“Antifa,” or anti-fascists, a heads-up on who would be attending.

Yiannopoulos posted on Facebook that he intends a “fabulous, and
peaceful, celebration of free speech including more than 20
speakers from diverse viewpoints.”

But Michael Mark Cohen, an associate teaching professor of
American studies and African American studies who helped draft
the letter, said the danger was real.

After he recently criticized Yiannopoulos on Twitter, he said,
emails and tweets threatened to shoot his students and set him
on fire. He arrived on campus Thursday to find what he said were
frightening security measures for the Shapiro event, including
bomb-sniffing dogs in his building, main streets shut down and
barricades throughout the university grounds.

“This is not a safe place to work or teach,” he said. “This
campus is an armed military camp.”

He criticized Berkeley Chancellor Carol T. Christ for allowing
the events to go forward.

“She’s the one endangering the campus by letting this circus go
on,” he said.

In an interview Wednesday, Christ defended the free speech
rights of all people. “Our belief in free speech is most tested
when it is speech that’s odious or abhorrent,” she said. “I wish
our community could not only hold that value but also understand
that it’s by showing it up for what it is that we move forward.”

Christ took no position on the faculty boycott but said she was
troubled that it would allow Yiannopoulos “the occasion of
compromising our main mission, which is instruction — research
and teaching.”

Yeah, it interferes with the bigotry indoctrination of the
drones...

http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-uc-berkeley-boycott-
milo-20170914-story.html

[#BeamMeUpScotty]

On 09/15/2017 12:39 AM, Land Of Nuts wrote:
> More than 200 UC Berkeley instructors and faculty members are
> calling for a shutdown of classes and activities when right-wing
> provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos and other conservative speakers
> visit campus this month.

Have the locks changed in all 200 classrooms. ;)



--
That's Karma

[David Hartung]

Better to revoke tenure and terminate them.

[#BeamMeUpScotty]

That's number two on the list.


--
That's Karma