Story highlights Jeffrey Herbst and Mitch Gelman: Freedom of speech applies to those whose rhetoric many find distasteful

Attempts to silence Milo Yiannopoulos gave he and his allies a megaphone that otherwise would not have existed, they say

Jeffrey Herbst is president and CEO of the Newseum and formerly president of Colgate University. Mitch Gelman is chief technology officer at the Newseum. The views expressed are their own.

(CNN) Milo Yiannopoulos, an editor at Breitbart, has single-handedly caused another free speech crisis on campus. Yiannopoulos -- who was permanently banned from Twitter in July for his racist trolling -- has achieved a level of fame (infamy) for his indictments of political correctness, criticism of feminism (he calls it a "cancer"), and his comparison of the head of Planned Parenthood to "Hitler."

As part of his "Dangerous Faggot" tour, Yiannopoulos is visiting college campuses across the country. Wednesday night, his talk at the University of California, Berkeley, the home of the free speech movement in the 1960s, was canceled because of protesters brandishing bricks and setting fires. His talks have also been canceled at universities including North Dakota State University, Iowa State University, the University of Maryland, Florida Atlantic University and the University of California, Davis.

Elsewhere, he has been allowed to talk, often in the face of protesters who wanted to shut him down.

Jeffrey Herbst

But the protesters, whose actions led to the cancellation of his talk at Berkeley and elsewhere, have done a disservice to the First Amendment.

As numerous college presidents have noted while defending their decisions to allow him to speak in the face of protests, freedom of speech applies to those whose rhetoric many find distasteful. Indeed, hate speech, except under very narrow exceptions -- such as direct encouragement to others to immediately commit violence -- is protected speech in the United States.

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