BERKELEY, Calif. — What do you do as a reporter when a protest begins? You cover it.

But what about when the man being protested is known for rhetoric that makes you nauseated? Or when you see a student get beaten up because he looked “like a Nazi”?

How do you remain objective?

Those were the questions that faced me when, as a reporter for the student newspaper at the University of California, Berkeley, I covered the protest on Wednesday night at the college that turned violent, drawing national attention. I didn’t know what to think about it all, and truthfully, I still don’t.

The protesters were demonstrating against a scheduled speech on campus by Milo Yiannopoulos, a Breitbart editor and right-wing provocateur, who had been invited by the Berkeley College Republicans.

This was always going to be a controversial event. Mr. Yiannopoulos has been giving inflammatory speeches on a college tour meant to push back against what he sees as the stifling politically correct left. But his language has veered decidedly toward hate speech. At the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, for example, he singled out a transgender student for ridicule by name.