The modern story of free speech on American college campuses began in Berkeley. Will it end there, too? I doubt it, but President Trump’s tweet threatening federal funding for UC Berkeley should raise alarms across the political spectrum.

UC Berkeley cancels 'alt-right' speaker Milo Yiannopoulos as thousands protest Read more

The events in Berkeley on Wednesday evening, truly idiotic violence and vandalism by a small number of activists, should force us to think about this moment – not just the cancellation of Milo Yiannopoulos’s speech. Our constitutional commitment to debate, dissent and freedom of expression is bumping up against hateful, attention-seeking speakers who rush up to, and often cross over into, incitement to violence, harassment and hatred.

It’s worth backing up for a moment and considering why the violence in Berkeley resonates nationally. For many people, Berkeley is the 60s, perhaps the most polarizing time in modern American history. For the left, it is the 1964 Free Speech Movement and protests against university authority and the Vietnam war. For the right, it is hippies and the violence and radicalism some see embodied by the People’s Park riots and Governor Ronald Reagan’s calling in of the national guard in 1969.

The president presented an obviously false picture of what happened on Wednesday evening

Those images coexist. But they share the origins of 1964. When student Mario Savio attacked UC President Clark Kerr and his book, The Uses of the University, as a guide for managing students and preparing them, factory-like, for a future in the military-industry complex, he lit up the imaginations of students across the country.

Savio’s perspective drew from the reality of a university administration that treated students to a narrow version of education, forbidding on-campus political activity. Cal students objected, and it was from this desire for political expression on campus that the Free Speech Movement was born. Throughout the fall of 1964, Cal convulsed with peaceful protest, grinding the university “machine” to a halt. Savio famously addressed thousands from the steps of Sproul Hall calling for peaceful protest – “That doesn’t mean that you have to break anything!” – and civil disobedience.

The students’ perspective, which Savio articulated so well, was that the university should encourage free speech and free thought, that debate and dispute should be part of higher education. Rather than arrest students for protesting, as the university was doing, it should provide wide-open space for political debate, allowing students to develop the tools to be engaged citizens.

That spirit remains in Berkeley today, as it does at universities across the country. I see it in my students and others where I teach, at the University of California, Irvine. It is often under threat, most especially by a fringe seeking opportunities for violent response. It is under threat from students who, in their rejection of the ideas conveyed by speakers, press their universities – which are often eager to avoid controversy – to cancel visits.

Where they object, students should convey their rejection. But that gives no student or student group or university the right to censor the expression. To allow such censorship would be to encourage behavior that we would rightly condemn if a public institution tried to shut down expression absent incitement to violence.

Of course, Wednesday night in the Trump era is not Sproul Plaza in 1964. Indeed, Yiannopoulos challenges the cozy if accurate narrative of the university’s role. Milo is no Mario. Where Mario was generous, thoughtful and deep, Milo is selfish, materialistic and shallow. He is not merely a political speaker coming to present a point of view many find offensive. He harasses. He calls out his marks in his speeches. He encourages informing on “illegals”.

In this case, the University did the right thing. The university had to ask what risks were raised by having him speak on campus. Did students and administrators expect that he would incite violence against students? Did the university expect him to cause a breakdown in public order? Short of incitement, public universities cannot be in the business of shutting down speech, no matter how offensive.

That doesn’t mean that student groups and universities should gratuitously invite such hateful people. Ugly, self-promoting, discriminatory rhetoric doesn’t have to be aired merely because it can be aired. But neither should students and universities be forbidden from doing so. And if they do, the opposition response should be peaceful protest and massive condemnation, not censorship.

That returns us to the Trump administration, which got it exactly wrong here. A president should be thinking about the safety of our constitutional norms and the security of all people, speaker and offended audience. President Trump could have called for non-violence and deplored, without hyperbole, the tiny minority who resorted to violence. He could have welcomed the overwhelming majority of students and community members who came out to protest peacefully the presence of Yiannopoulos.

He could have applauded the University’s decision not to censor the speech and to provide resources for security. He could have noted that the essential lesson of 1964 – that universities are not supposed to manage students but to give them space to learn, dissent, protest, get things right and wrong for themselves – is one we should embrace again today.

Instead, the president presented an obviously false picture of what happened on Wednesday evening and seemed to intimidate the university – indeed, all universities. He took what should have been a national teachable moment about both free speech and smart ways to reject hateful speech, and he appropriated it for narrow political ends.

It’s difficult to imagine the president registering the nuances and dilemmas of managing a university campus today. Those dilemmas are real. And as public authorities with real responsibilities to educate resolve them, they should keep in mind the message Mario Savio delivered from atop a police car, thousands of students around him, over 50 years ago in Berkeley.