BERKELEY — Protesters and police are gearing up for a confrontation Wednesday over a visit from Milo Yiannopoulos, writer for Breitbart News and alt-right provocateur, who intends to kick off a campaign to withdraw funding from “sanctuary campuses.”

Yiannopoulos, who has outed a transgender student, called feminism a cancer and rape culture a “fantasy,” was blocked from speaking at UC Davis earlier this month after rowdy protests prompted the UC Davis College Republicans to shut down their event.

The planned Wednesday event, hosted by UC Berkeley College Republicans, will mark the start of the conservative David Horowitz Freedom Center’s campaign to withdraw federal grants from campuses that protect from deportation students who are undocumented immigrants. The University of California system announced measures in November that would, in effect, make it a sanctuary campus.

The announcement of Yiannopoulos’ visit initially prompted calls for the campus to block the event. Instead, the university intends to charge the College Republicans for costs that “far exceed the basic security costs” of an event.

Chancellor Nicholas Dirks sent a message to students, staff and faculty Thursday, affirming the university’s commitment to freedom of speech while also distancing the school from the decision by the College Republicans, a “separate legal entity,” to host the event.

“… We are defending the right to free expression at an historic moment for our nation, when this right is once again of paramount importance,” Dirks wrote. “In this context, we cannot afford to undermine those rights, and feel a need to make a spirited defense of the principle of tolerance, even when it means we tolerate that which may appear to us as intolerant.”

Now, Berkeley-based groups have put out calls to shut down the Berkeley College Republicans event on Wednesday.

The event, which will be held at the Martin Luther King Jr. Student Union Building, will begin at 8 p.m. and the doors will open at 7 p.m. The venue holds 500 people and has been sold out for weeks, according to campus officials.

Protesters intend to organize at 6 p.m. at Sproul Plaza and campus officials expect a “significant number of people” to gather outside in protest.