You don't get to handwave away threats of violence and then claim no one censored her. The fear of violence IS the censorship.

The school did the right thing. They have a responsibility to protect public safety.

If you're not here to argue, then don't wade into discussions telling someone they're wrong with no willingness to back it up with evidence or persuasion.

If there weren't massive protests and concerns over safety becuase of said protests, she would have had no reason to withdraw.

They seem to be missing the key part of the equation- letting the person speak. They want to skip right to the consequences, without justifying them at all.

Once you start deciding what opinions are valid to voice, everything else is just a matter of degree and time.

Well, Berkeley is part of the public University of California, IIRC, so it becomes kind of a gray area constitutionally. IANAL, but my armchair reading is that Coulter (or the students, more on that in a sec) wouldn't have a case anyway, because the speech was cancelled obstensibly for reasons of public and personal…

I mean, it's profoundly depressing that students would want Coulter to come talk, but no more than the fact that she exists and has some degree of popularity in the first place.

Oh, I didn't mean to imply that Coulter was goign to learn anything. As you say, her livelihood is based on basic trolling,

It's a common misconception that the government has to be involved to censor someone. (I had it for years). That is only one form of censorship.

Exactly. The short-sightedness of liberals around this issue is mind-boggling.

Thank God I don't live in Canada.

It doesn't matter if they're "important" or not. Especially since "important" is a tremendously subjective term, and eventually someone is going to think that a viewpoint you hold dear isn't "important" enough to protect.

Attention whores do not complain when no one comes to hear them speak. Their entire being rests on the reaction of crowds, good or bad.

Except now it's exactly what has happened.

Foolishness is in the eye of the beholder, and students are the literally the last people that have any idea what concepts are valuable to them or not. By design- that's why they're in school, after all.

Believe me, I'd shed no tears if Ann Coulter and her ilk disappeared from the face of the earth. But they exist, and if students at the college want to hear what she has to say, that's their right.

I think a lot of people went into watching that interview with the belief that if Maher didn't harrangue and finger wave at Milo for 15 minutes straight, he was betraying every liberal principle. It's another purity test.

The school is doing the right thing in avoiding violence, or the risk thereof. The student body is in the wrong for forcing them to do so.

Perhaps you could enligten me then.