The University of California, Berkeley\u2019s Chancellor and chief of police both refused to acknowledge any wrongdoing, or even mistakes, in their response to last week\u2019s riots on campus.<\/p>\n

Chancellor Nicholas Dirks defended his school\u2019s response to the violent riots, arguing that they in no way hurt the prestigious university\u2019s reputation of protecting First Amendment rights on campus.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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Diversity is written all over that banner of mostly un-hooded folks.<\/p>\n

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\u201cI don\u2019t think we\u2019ve been tarnished at all. In fact, I have been hearing from people across the country that we have indeed honored our tradition and that we have been exemplary in terms of our commitment to freedom of speech,\u201d Dirks explained, criticizing \u201crepresentations of what happened here\u201d that he feels disregarded or misrepresented the facts to portray Berkeley as a hostile environment for free speech.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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Threats of violence is the pillar of our\u00a0democracy and very foundation of free speech according to Berkeleyism.<\/p>\n

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\u201cThere are lots of representations of what happened here that I think are being driven by political agendas that have no particular regard for the evidence that is part of this or any of the facts or truth that surrounds it,\u201d he asserted.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

<\/p>\n

Is that a hammer and sickle?<\/p>\n

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Throughout the interview, both Dirks and UC Berkeley Police Department Chief Margo Bennett refused to place any blame on the school for \u201cnot doing enough to enable the speech to happen,\u201d nor for preventing rioters from forcing its cancellation.<\/p>\n

Bennett then defended the apparent passivity of her officers during the riot, insisting that confronting the vandals would only have made the situation more volatile.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

<\/p>\n

Law enforcement officers following orders.<\/p>\n

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“I don\u2019t think so, I mean certainly we can be criticized for a lot of things,\u201d Bennett said in response to whether or not she had made any errors in judgement. \u201cI don\u2019t believe it was the wrong thing, because had we gone out there, two things would have happened: The black bloc group would have gotten energized by our presence, and number two they would have turned around and started attacking our police, which means our use of force would have escalated. I believe we made the right decision.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

<\/p>\n

Law enforcement officers in riot gear protect the UC Regents while students protest tuition increases in March 2015, 30 students attended the protest.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Hazmat specialists clean up toxic fuel and burnt metal. Students for a Greener Berkeley\u00a0were not available for comment.<\/p>\n

Ironically, the Free Speech Movement that began on the campus of UC Berkeley in 1964 was in protest of the universities ban on on-campus political activities in addition to other civil rights issues. Chancellor Nicholas Dirks, the guy who doesn’t understand budgets and sexual harassment laws, was insulated by the riots behind\u00a0a new\u00a0$700,000 security fence at his campus residence. He describes UC Berkeley’s support and simultaneous condemnation of the Berkeley College Republicans right to host the event\u00a0in the “Chancellor\u2019s message on campus appearance by Milo Yiannopoulos” here<\/a>. Mario “I am not a communist” Savio was seen rolling over in his grave while Jack “Don’t trust anybody over 30” Weinberg was unavailable for comment.<\/p>\n

Heckler’s veto, absolutely.<\/p>\n

Berkeley defends police passivity during anti-free speech riot<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The University of California, Berkeley\u2019s Chancellor and chief of police both refused to acknowledge any wrongdoing, … Free Speech; Berkeley Style<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":659,"featured_media":70246,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-70228","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.azuse.cloud\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/6b8c83f5-5cc7-4031-bade-ebcfcaadda36.jpg?fit=2048%2C1536&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70228","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/659"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=70228"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70228\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/70246"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=70228"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=70228"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=70228"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}