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Justice Department Will Back Suit on ‘Free Speech’ Zone

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Justice Department Will Back Suit on ‘Free Speech’ Zone

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WASHINGTON -- Attorney General Jeff Sessions declared Tuesday at Georgetown University Law Center that freedom of thought and speech are "under attack" on American campuses.

He said the Department of Justice would file a "statement of interest" in a lawsuit involving a Georgia public college's use of "free speech zones" and that the department would make more such filings in weeks to come.

Sessions's new apparent focus on free speech in higher ed reflects an ongoing concern of many Republican officials, who have held multiple congressional hearings to take college leaders to task over high-profile campus incidents. It also comes after a week in which the president drew national attention for his coarse condemnation of National Football League athletes' public protests against police brutality, which have remained lawful, nonviolent and nondisruptive.

And the speech drew protests from many Georgetown law students and faculty members who oppose the attorney general's broader agenda as well as his record on civil rights.

"Freedom of thought and speech on the American campus are under attack," Sessions declared. "The American university was once the center of academic freedom -- a place of robust debate, a forum for the competition of ideas. But it is transforming into an echo chamber of political correctness and homogenous thought, a shelter for fragile egos."

The attorney general cited a 2017 survey from the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education that found 40 percent of responding colleges maintained speech codes "substantially infringing" on constitutionally protected speech. (He didn't mention that FIRE's own metrics showed the situation improving at colleges.)

The lawsuit DOJ weighed in on Tuesday involved Chike Uzuegbunam, a student at Georgia Gwinnett College who, his lawyers have argued, was prevented from efforts to "share his Christian faith" because of campus rules limiting expressive displays to small "free speech zones." Such zones have been vulnerable legally in cases where they are seen as effectively preventing students' free speech.

A statement from the Justice Department said the zones at Georgia Gwinnett constitute 0.0015 percent of the campus, and that students must also obtain prior authorization for many activities, even in the zones.

A spokeswoman for the college said Georgia Gwinnett believes the rights set forth in the First Amendment "are of the utmost importance."

"Though the College cannot comment on pending litigation, it has ensured and will continue to ensure that individuals are able to exercise their First Amendment rights on campus," said Asia Hauter, a spokeswoman for the college.

Sessions picked out a handful of instances of restrictive speech codes at colleges and universities, as well as notable incidents involving campus speech conflicts, to depict a broad threat to free expression in higher education. (The full text of the attorney general's remarks can be found here.)

Noting the incident when Charles Murray, a controversial social scientist, was shouted down and prevented from talking at Middlebury College, Sessions said that colleges were too tolerant of the "heckler's veto."

"This is not right. This is not the great tradition of America," he said. "And, yet, school administrators bend to this behavior. In effect, they coddle and encourage it."

Middlebury eventually punished nearly 70 students for varying roles in what happened during Murray's visit.

FIRE welcomed Sessions's speech Tuesday. Executive Director Robert Shibley said, "As campuses struggle with an uptick in violence in response to controversial speech, we are glad to see the Department of Justice bring much-needed attention to this issue."

PEN America, another group that advocates for free speech, meanwhile questioned some of the attorney general's statements. The group issued a statement noting that Sessions did not mention incidents in which conservatives have urged colleges -- sometimes successfully -- to block speakers.

"In an environment where the White House and administration have repeatedly failed to convincingly denounce hateful rhetoric and gestures, some Americans understandably fear that menacing speech is spreading untrammeled and can morph into dangerous action," the PEN statement said. "We agree with Jeff Sessions that the defense of free speech rights on campus must be uncompromising, and that neither the heckler's veto nor considerations of political correctness should be allowed to silence controversial speech. We also share the concern that, in some instances, free speech rights have been sidelined in favor of other values and priorities. But we note that calls to silence free speech on campus in recent months have derived from both the left and the right and regret that the attorney general confined his examples to left-leaning groups protesting voices considered more conservative. As the Justice Department wades into issues of campus speech, we hope its defense of free expression on campus will encompass not only opposition to infringements on free speech, but also the imperative to ensure that U.S. university campuses are truly open to the speech of all students, regardless of political leanings, LGBT status and racial, ethnic or religious background."

Sessions has a checkered history with other civil rights groups that may make him an odd messenger to announce a new priority on free speech.

After news of the scheduled event leaked Sunday night, many were quick to note that the Department of Justice is prosecuting a Code Pink activist who was dragged out of the attorney general's confirmation hearing in January after audibly laughing at comments by Alabama Senator Richard Shelby lauding Sessions's record on equality. The woman was found guilty in May of demonstrating on Capitol grounds and disorderly conduct. A judge threw out that verdict, but the government has said it will go back to trial.

Sessions has a much longer record that's provided fodder for critics, among them civil rights groups like the American Civil Liberties Union. He's called the Voting Rights Act " intrusive legislation " and prosecuted civil rights activists in Alabama for registering black voters.

As a federal prosecutor in Alabama, Sessions referred to groups like the ACLU and the NAACP as " un-American," according to Senate testimony by former colleagues after he was nominated for a federal judgeship in 1986.

And in 1996, as Alabama state attorney general, Sessions sought to block a gay organization from holding a conference on the University of Alabama campus. He argued that the meeting of the Southeastern Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual College Conference would violate an Alabama law prohibiting state universities from using public funds to promote "actions prohibited by the sodomy and sexual misconduct laws."

Recent actions from the Trump administration suggest some discordance with the Justice Department's professed commitment to defending free speech. Last month, Harvard University rescinded a fellowship offered to NSA whistle-blower Chelsea Manning after being pressured by the former and current directors of the CIA.

Asked about Sessions's opposition to the conference and his position on Manning, a Justice Department spokesman said the attorney general's remarks spoke for themselves.

In a question-and-answer period after his remarks, Sessions also defended recent remarks from President Trump on public protests. Former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick last year protested police brutality and systemic racism by kneeling during the national anthem before games. Trump said over the weekend that NFL owners should fire any "son of a bitch" who kneels during the anthem, as Kaepernick did. Those comments drew wide condemnation and prompted wider acts of protest from NFL players Sunday and Monday.

But Sessions said "the president has free speech rights, too."

"If they take a provocative act, they can expect to be condemned," he said of protesting players.

Sessions only took questions submitted in advance by students who RSVP'd for the event. Protesters outside complained that more than 100 students who originally received tickets for the event through an online lottery were denied entry because they were not affiliated with a course taught by law professor Randy Barnett, a well-known libertarian.

The law school did not respond to questions about the concerns voiced by students.

"My impression based on who was disinvited and who was allowed to come into the room is they were looking for a curated audience," said Lauren Phillips, a second-year Georgetown law student involved in organizing the protest. "Which is very ironic to me, given that he was giving a speech on campus free speech."

About 250 law students and faculty gathered outside on the law center's front steps before the event. And a group of law professors released a statement beforehand condemning what they called the hypocrisy of the attorney general on free speech issues.

Phillips said that despite deep personal disagreements she has with Sessions over public policy, she supported the school's decision to host the speech -- an opinion she said was not shared by many of her classmates who joined in protesting the event. But she said that the university should at a minimum have facilitated a real exchange of questions and answers between students and Sessions. Phillips had hoped to ask a question herself about the attorney general's ongoing opposition to bipartisan criminal justice reform efforts.

"I wonder if he believes that campus free speech should include ability of people to express views that are different from his own," she said. "His actions speak louder than words here. He excluded dissenting voices."

Suhaib Khan, another second-year law student, who wore a "Black Lives Matter" T-shirt Tuesday, was able to gain entry to the speech before joining protesters outside afterward.

He said he disagreed with the law school's decision to host Sessions, especially without giving students the opportunity to weigh in. Absent the chance to challenge or question the attorney general, Georgetown was basically giving the attorney general a public relations opportunity, he said.

"There is an active threat against the right of college students to have free speech, but it is not where he is trying to make it out to be," Khan said.

Ted Mitchell, the president of the American Council on Education, said free expression and competition between ideas is essential to higher education and has been from the beginning.

"Institutions across the country are making themselves open and available to competing ideas. Georgetown is a perfect example," he said. "Georgetown welcomed Attorney General Sessions today to express ideas they knew were going to be unpopular with a large portion of their student body and probably their faculty, too. Institutions see that as their responsibility."

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Attorney General Sessions blasts colleges on issues of free speech

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WASHINGTON -- Attorney General Jeff Sessions declared Tuesday at Georgetown University Law Center that freedom of thought and speech are "under attack" on American campuses. He said the Department of Justice would file a "statement of interest" in a lawsuit involving a Georgia public college's use of "free speech zones" and that the department would make more such filings in weeks to come.

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Purdue’s President Says Free-Speech Policy Forces Him to Defend Faculty Critic

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Purdue’s President Says Free-Speech Policy Forces Him to Defend Faculty Critic

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In a message to a Purdue University professor, the institution's president, Mitch Daniels, criticized the faculty member's ties to "Antifa" and said the campus's free-speech policy had forced him to defend the professor, the Journal & Courier reports.

When Mr. Daniels was pressed by Bill Mullen, a professor of English and American studies and a founding member of the Campus Anti-Fascist Network, to further investigate white-supremacist posters found on the campus, the president responded with details from Purdue's free-speech policy. He wrote that administrators can condemn such posters but cannot silence the individuals who put them up, no matter how offensive the posters are.

Mr. Daniels also wrote that the policy requires him to defend Mr. Mullen's right to free speech.

"In particular, your defense of the so-called 'Antifa' organization, a group that has not only advocated but practiced violence, gave deep offense and embarrassment to many," Mr. Daniels wrote in a message given to the Journal & Courier.

The Campus Anti-Fascist Network is not formally related to the Antifa groups that sometimes practice violent protest.

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Purdue's President Says Free-Speech Policy Forces Him to Defend Faculty Critic

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In a message to a Purdue University professor, the institution's president, Mitch Daniels, criticized the faculty member's ties to "Antifa" and said the campus's free-speech policy had forced him to defend the professor, the Journal & Courier reports.

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College students might appreciate free speech in the abstract, but question them on more granular issues, and their support softens, according to a new survey.

The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), a prominent civil rights watchdog group, released the results of its new survey on student free speech Wednesday, a summary of the opinions of 1,250 students at two- and four-year institutions across the country.

While most students supported the principles of campus free expression, some of their answers seemed to contradict this in some way. For instance, while 93 percent of the students indicated that colleges should invite a variety of guest speakers to campus, 78 percent of those students who identified on the political spectrum as "very liberal" believe that invitations should be rescinded in some cases -- 38 percent of "very conservative" students also backed an invitation being withdrawn in certain circumstances.

About 69 percent of students over all thought that a speaker should be disinvited if they have made racist comments.

Most students indicated they wouldn't try to block an event in any way -- about 5 percent said they would take down fliers advertising a speaker, 4 percent said they might try to stop other students from attending a talk, 2 percent would try to disrupt an event with noise and only 1 percent said they might resort to violence.

"We've seen more students prone to using disruptive actions, and we did not find that" in the survey, Nico Perrino, FIRE's communications director, said of recent incidents on college campuses. "It may have been that we're seeing a vocal minority. That statistic to me is heartening."

Shouting down controversial speakers has of late become much more common on campuses. At Texas Southern University Monday, a conservative Texas state lawmaker, Representative Briscoe Cain, was unable to address students after a protest drowned him out. The president of the University of Oregon, Michael Schill, couldn't give his State of the University address last week after student protests interrupted him, and late last month, at the College of William & Mary, students associated with Black Lives Matter blocked an American Civil Liberties Union official from speaking.

About 28 percent of students who consider themselves Democrats believe they shouldn't have to encounter a protest on campus, compared to about 60 percent of self-described Republicans, the survey found.

Students were also split on hate speech, which hasn't been legally defined by the Supreme Court; attempts to censor hate speech via the judicial system have generally failed.

Though nearly half of the students indicated they understood that hate speech was protected under the First Amendment, about 31 percent felt that it shouldn't be. Right-leaning students favored hate speech being protected, while liberal students did not.

FIRE has always been concerned about this type of censorship, said Perrino, though the results of its survey were unsurprising to him.

"It just means that FIRE and other organizations that support these principles need to do a better job educating and talking to students and explaining why this is important, and also what they mean for students," he said.

The survey relied on similar methodology as another study on free expression conducted by the Brookings Institution that was published last month. Brookings's work was criticized for using an "opt-in" model that some pollsters said did not properly capture a representative sample of college students. The Brookings survey was also attacked for its timing -- students were asked about their thoughts on free speech around the time when white supremacists held a deadly demonstration at the University of Virginia campus and in the city of Charlottesville, Va., prompting national discussion of these issues.

Perrino said FIRE was pleased its survey seemed to match the results of other studies, such as one from Gallup and the Knight Foundation issued last year.

"I would say we should always look at these surveys with a critical eye," he said. "But the way FIRE conducted our survey has matched the way other organizations have done these surveys. We did our best to be as representative as possible. We can never be perfectly representative, but don't see our survey as having glaring deficiencies that should result in people outright dismissing it."

This survey was paid for with part of a $2.5 million grant to FIRE from the John Templeton Foundation, a religiously affiliated group traditionally dedicated to exploring scientific and theological research. FIRE intends to conduct two more surveys, one about students' opinions on due process, and a second one on free speech. FIRE has already published a ranking of top institutions' due process protections.

Some of the other survey findings:

About 92 percent of students believe that it is important to be a part of a campus where they're exposed to ideas other than their own.

When students hear an opinion they disagree with in class, about 60 percent said they would attempt to understand their classmates' views -- 28 percent said they might avoid future interactions with the person with a dissenting opinion, but only 5 percent thought the person shouldn't have expressed it.

Almost half of students said they would avoid a person whose opinion they found offensive, and exactly half said they would avoid someone who had been racist.

About 64 percent of students said they had changed their attitude or thoughts about a topic after hearing a guest speaker.

Nearly half of Democratic students said they would want their institutions to reject racist, homophobic or sexist speakers. About 43 percent of those liberal students said they would want their university to take away an invitation to President Trump to speak.

With qualitative answers, FIRE determined that about 13 percent of students associate hate speech with violence.

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Students' opinions on free speech divided

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College students might appreciate free speech in the abstract, but question them on more granular issues, and their support softens, according to a new survey. The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), a prominent civil rights watchdog group, released the results of its new survey on student free speech Wednesday, a summary of the opinions of 1,250 students at two- and four-year institutions across the country.

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What Berkeley’s $800,000 Did — and Didn’t — Buy During ‘Free Speech Week’

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What Berkeley’s $800,000 Did — and Didn’t — Buy During ‘Free Speech Week’

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Last month, after weeks of ambitious pronouncements about a weeklong festival of free speech, Milo Yiannopoulos appeared at the University of California at Berkeley. He spoke for 20 minutes. The university spent roughly $800,000 to allow him to do so.

The day after his visit, a Monday, four students sat on a bench 100 feet away from an academic building that students protesting Mr. Yiannopoulos and "fascist speech" had earlier tried to occupy. A fire alarm - it was unclear who pulled it or why - wailed steadily, a remnant of the day's activism.

The students, recent transfers from Santa Barbara City College, had spent the past month wondering what Mr. Yiannopoulos's much-publicized visit would bring. Now, with the event looking like an anticlimax, they pondered how their new university had handled the affair.

Even after the collapse of Mr. Yiannopoulos's so-called Free Speech Week - which was to feature a list of conservative darlings, including Stephen Bannon, the former White House adviser and current Breitbart executive editor, and Ann Coulter, the anti-immigration author and commentator - the students described a state of unease on campus.

Their nervousness was made worse by the lines and lines of police officers they encountered all around. The officers carried nightsticks (some had rifles), wore thick armored vests, and stood against - and at one point, on top of - campus buildings.

The new chancellor, Carol Christ, has promised to dedicate this year to freedom of speech, and to pay the cost to do so. The toll isn't just financial.

One of the students asked another, Sebastian Herics, if he had attended a speech earlier in the month by the conservative speaker Ben Shapiro. (Mr. Herics had gone to check it out but hadn't made it inside the auditorium.) That one that cost the university nearly $600,000 in security expenses. They compared the event to Mr. Yiannopoulos's carnivalesque appearance alongside Pamela Geller, an anti-Islamic commentator, and Mike Cernovich, a right-wing conspiracist. Mr. Yiannopoulos had signed autographs for his fans and held up some of their signs - one read "feminism is a cancer" - before being spirited away by a security detail into a white SUV.

So, the students asked, was that worth it - the money, the distraction, the police presence? The verdict was mixed.

Mr. Herics, his voice diluted by the din of a helicopter whirring overhead, said he was "kind of happy" that Free Speech Week had turned out to be a bust. "It's not going to be as anxiety-ridden. It's just, Come to class. I am not going to have to worry about, OK, who is going to be on my campus today? How many cops are going to be walking around? Is anybody going to get beat up by cops?" But another student, Maggie Hodgins, offered a much different take on the demise of Mr. Yiannopoulos's event. "I think this martyrizes them," she said. "That is just giving them even more leverage to be like, They're trying to take away our free speech."

Students could debate whether Mr. Yiannopoulos ever actually intended to stage a major event on the campus, just as they could debate whether Berkeley officials took the right approach in planning for one. But there was a clear reality. The university had just made a huge cash outlay - $800,000 was the estimate; officials said they are still tallying the full cost - to put scores of officers on campus to combat an unknown threat.

The militant "black bloc" approach - much talked about, but seldom seen - has became a specter that haunts all would-be controversial speaking events at the university. Black bloc members, clad in black clothing and masks, smashed windows and set fires at an initially peaceful protest of a speech Mr. Yiannopoulos was scheduled to give in February, leading to the event's cancellation.

The black bloc overlaps with the antifa, a decentralized and often nonviolent network of antifascist protesters. Mr. Yiannopoulos and other critics regularly cite the antifa broadly as a threat to free speech and the American way of life.

The university had every reason to expect antifa members would protest Mr. Yiannopoulos, but it was impossible to know if black bloc members would show their mask-covered faces. As it turned out, they didn't attend the Sunday event. Instead, members of a local group, Refuse Fascism, carried bullhorns and signs. By Any Means Necessary, a local coalition of affirmative-action and immigration activists, also sent members. Both groups have websites; both were peaceful. Black bloc they were not. (Some black bloc protesters were spotted in the streets of Berkeley later that day, but they didn't show up for the Yiannopoulos event.)

Regardless, the images and newscasts from the violent February event are still strongly tied to the university's public identity. The new chancellor, Carol Christ, has promised to dedicate this year to freedom of speech, and to pay the cost to do so. The toll isn't just financial. The university's tactic for protecting far-right speech - flooding the campus with officers - wore on many professors and students.

The fire alarm continued its wail; the helicopter buzzed. Ms. Hodgins asked Mr. Herics a tough question: Would there have been violence if the police weren't there?

"That's what I mean," he said. "There's a very heightened sense of, Something might happen. Because it's true, we don't know."

'Consumed by One Set of Voices'

Adam Jadhav keeps in his office a red sweatshirt emblazoned with three parallel arrows pointing diagonally downward, a symbol associated with the antifa movement. He donned that sweater the day of Mr. Yiannopoulos's appearance.

Mr. Jadhav, a doctoral candidate who teaches a geography class, was one of roughly 200 instructors who signed a petition that called for classes to be canceled from Monday to Wednesday because of potential disruption. He opted to keep the classes canceled even after the event fell apart, offering extra office hours for students to catch up with their coursework.

Twice he has been featured on Mr. Yiannopoulos's social-media accounts as an example of what's wrong with Berkeley. Under one, a photo that shows Mr. Jadhav announcing the cancelation his class, online commentators called for his termination. In the other, Mr. Jadhav wears his red sweatshirt - he calls it his protest gear - while chatting with the dean of students, Joseph Greenwell. The commentators online chastised the dean for speaking to the activist, taking broader shots at the university and the antifa as a whole.

Yes, the antifa: It's a term that Mr. Jadhav more or less embraces, referring to himself as anti-Fascist. In his shared office, he has printed out the word "Resist" and stuck it to the windows. Passers-by can see the message while strolling across the grassy lawns and paved pathways surrounding the building. He has gotten permission to write the word "NOPE" - an inversion of the Obama slogan "Hope," applied to Donald Trump - on the roof of his office building.

Mr. Jadhav declined to criticize masked protesters - "I don't judge people who feel vulnerable enough such that they can't let their name be known," he said - but like many members of the campus community who identify with anti-Fascist movements, he showed up to the protest without a mask and with no intention toward violence. "I am prepared to take the punch rather than throw one," he said.

On Monday, he joined a crowd of about 200 protesters on a grassy hill, many wearing shirts adorned with the Berkeley logo and the phrase "Anti-Fascist." Agitators, armed with camera phones, heckled those gathered. Police officers circled the scene; before the day was over, they broke up at least one scuffle.

The protesters eventually led a march across the campus, culminating in a small sit-in at the academic building that Mr. Herics and Ms. Hodgins looked out on. Classes were disrupted. The police monitored the whole affair, moving alongside the rally and standing inside with those who tried to occupy the building.

The march could be seen as a demonstration that Berkeley used police to safeguard the speech not just of conservative speakers but also of campus counterprotesters. In a telling but underreported moment, the university even appeared to support the right of professors to cancel their classes.

"We fully trust our faculty to cover their curriculum over the course of the semester. How and when and where they do that is up to them," Dan Mogulof, a university spokesman, said at a news conference following the Sunday event.

But Mr. Jadhav questioned whose free speech the university was really defending. The nation has laws about what speech is forbidden on the public airwaves, he said, so university campuses should also be able to deem some speakers, like Mr. Yiannopoulos, inappropriate or inciting, rather than spending money on their behalf.

Berkeley, he said, is "being consumed by one set of voices, and those voices cross all lines from political argument into open harassment."

Costs and Consequences

Where did the $800,000 go?

The university declined to state how many police officers were on campus during Mr. Yiannopoulos's September visit. But cost breakdowns for his February event and an abortive speech by Ms. Coulter in April offer some insight into how the university might have spent its money this time around.

The greatest difference in money paid between the two prior events - the first cost nearly $270,000, the second ran about $664,000 - was the amount spent to bring in outside police officers. In February, no money was spent on outside agencies. In April, that number exploded to $414,500. Officers were outnumbered in February, Mr. Mogulof said, and administrators wanted to avoid making that mistake again.

Some costs did decrease: Damage to equipment ran the university just under $10,000 after the Yiannopoulos event. In April, when protests took place even though Ms. Coulter did not end up speaking, that figure was at zero. The cost of building repair and cleanup fell from roughly $52,800 to about $3,800.

Ms. Christ, the chancellor, has said she wished the money for security could have been spent differently. And she said she understood the frustration some people feel in seeing the university pour hundreds of thousands of dollars into an event that didn't happen.

"Free speech isn't free by a long shot," Ms. Christ has told The Chronicle.

But the university finds itself walking a tightrope. Spend too little on security, and officials risk a repeat of the events in February. Spend too much, and they get complaints from professors and students who feel the university is militarizing the campus at their financial and mental expense.

Part of the challenge, Mr. Mogulof said, is that Berkeley had to prepare for a collective that didn't announce its plans, but whose past actions forecast violence. In the weeks leading up to Free Speech Week, black bloc protesters physically clashed in the city of Berkeley with protesters on the far right, he said, adding that the university also had to prep for the possibility of far-right protesters, who have a track record of violence. (In Charlottesville, Va., for example, far-right protests resulted in the death of a counterprotester. Antifa activists, meanwhile, were seen by many as protectors, not instigators.)

"It would have been simply reckless to assume just because we hadn't received form letters, this fairly mysterious group wasn't going to show up again," Mr. Mogulof said. "Everyone's worst nightmare is being underprepared and as a result a student or faculty member or a member of the public, a law-abiding citizen, pays the price."

At Berkeley, in the aftermath of the Free Speech Week flop, some people said they had paid a price anyway - not just in taxes or tuition, but in mental real estate.

Mona Dibas, another recent transfer student, said she was among those people. On a Wednesday, when she said she should have been studying for an exam, she was instead engaging with another group of protesters who came to the campus to demonstrate against Berkeley's handling the free-speech event. Ms. Dibas said she certainly wasn't ready for the extensive presence of law enforcement at Berkeley.

"I wasn't expecting a police state on our campus." she said.

And Leigh Raiford, an associate professor of African-American studies, recalled how her department decided to close for the day following the fracas surrounding the ultimately canceled event featuring Ms. Coulter in April. People, she said, don't realize what it's like to try to study under the whir of a helicopter.

"I think the part that people forget is that it is our workplace," Ms. Raiford said at a cafe a few miles from the university. "To come to work and to feel threatened, or to see different areas of the campus that have become staging grounds, or the riot police, is really stressful. That spectacle has material consequences. It has psychological consequences. It has financial consequences."
Chris Quintana is a breaking-news reporter. Follow him on Twitter @cquintanadc or email him at chris.quintana@chronicle.com.

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What Berkeley's $800,000 Did - and Didn't - Buy During 'Free Speech Week'

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Last month, after weeks of ambitious pronouncements about a weeklong festival of free speech, Milo Yiannopoulos appeared at the University of California at Berkeley. He spoke for 20 minutes. The university spent roughly $800,000 to allow him to do so.

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Another Public University Says No to a White-Nationalist Event

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Another Public University Says No to a White-Nationalist Event

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Michigan State University on Thursday became the third public institution of higher education this week to decline to host an event at which the white nationalist Richard Spencer presumably would have spoken, and the president of a fourth institution, Louisiana State University, said Mr. Spencer would not be welcome there.

Like the other colleges that have said no to events involving Mr. Spencer or the National Policy Institute, the white-nationalist group he leads, Michigan State cited the increased security risks in light of the violence that erupted this past weekend when white nationalists and other groups rallied in Charlottesville, Va. One woman was killed when a car rammed into a crowd of counterprotesters there, and many other people were injured in that incident and other clashes.

Michigan State, the University of Florida, and Texas A&M University each asserted that it remained committed to protecting freedom of expression, but said the violence in Virginia had changed the equation for balancing that constitutional right against public-safety concerns.

In a statement released on Thursday afternoon, Michigan State administrators said that the university had denied a request from the National Policy Institute to rent space on its campus for a speaker sometime in September. According to a report in the Lansing State Journal, the statement did not say who the speaker might be, but said the university's decision had been made "due to significant concerns about public safety in the wake of the tragic violence in Charlottesville last weekend."

It added: "While we remain firm in our commitment to freedom of expression, our first obligation is to the safety and security of our students and our community."

The University of Florida also cited safety concerns raised by the "violent clashes in Charlottesville" when it denied the National Policy Institute's request to rent space for an event on its campus. In a statement released on Wednesday, W. Kent Fuchs, the institution's president, said the university's risk assessments had also taken into account messages on social media calling for similar violence in Gainesville, including statements like "the next battlefield is in Florida."

Texas A&M University used language similar to Florida's in announcing its decision on Monday to cancel an outside organizer's plans to hold a "White Lives Matter" event featuring Mr. Spencer on its College Station campus. The organizer, a former student named Preston Wiginton, had used the phrase "Today Charlottesville, Tomorrow Texas A&M" in promoting his planned event to the media.

Texas A&M said that by linking his event with the violent rallies in Charlottesville, Mr. Wiginton had created "a major security risk."

Mr. Spencer has vowed to challenge at least one of the university actions against him this week. "Such a brazen attack on free speech from a public university is infuriating," he said in a text message to the Associated Press after the University of Florida denied his group's request to rent space there.

Such a challenge might succeed. A federal judge ordered Auburn University to allow Mr. Spencer to speak after the university tried to cancel an April 18 event on its campus. The judge said Auburn had failed to provide sufficient evidence that Mr. Spencer's speech was likely to incite violence.

Louisiana State University has not declined a specific request for an appearance by Mr. Spencer on its Baton Rouge campus, but its president, F. King Alexander, told The Advocate that people had been calling the university trying to arrange such a visit. Mr. Alexander warned them off in advance: Mr. Spencer "is not welcome," he said.

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Another Public University Says No to a White-Nationalist Event

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Michigan State University on Thursday became the third public institution of higher education this week to decline to host an event at which the white nationalist Richard Spencer presumably would have spoken, and the president of a fourth institution, Louisiana State University, said Mr. Spencer would not be welcome there.