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People protest the appearance of then-Breitbart News editor Milo Yiannopoulos on Feb. 1 in Berkeley, Calif. (Photo: Ben Margot / Associated Press)
California is at the center of the ongoing, nationwide conflict over free speech on college campuses. The latest installment: After Ann Coulter was invited, and then disinvited, to speak at UC Berkeley, university administrators tried to placate the conservative polemicist by rescheduling the event. But they made clear that they couldn't guarantee her safety, and it looks as though Coulter might not show up after all.
Administrators are worried that the black-clad radicals who protested against alt-right provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos in February will disrupt the streets of Berkeley again -- a sad indication that the flagship public university of America's most populist state is unable to protect the constitutional rights of invited speakers.
However the Coulter affair comes to a close, though, a larger question will remain unanswered: Why do leftists care about an Ann Coulter speech, of all things? Why a Milo speech before that? Since when have protesters focused on preemptively silencing troll columnists? Since when, more importantly, have radicals taken aim at individuals rather than institutions?
He cared about the machine -- the system -- not its loudmouthed byproducts.
Prior to that speech, he railed against the San Francisco Hotel Assn. for denying equal employment opportunities to blacks, and traveled to Mississippi for the Freedom Summer protests against Jim Crow. Soon afterward, Berkeley's radical left would organize one of the earliest mass protests against the Vietnam War.
Back then, conservatives were the ones who worried that words would hurt us, even when they weren't aimed at authority figures. Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan supporters didn't want George Carlin saying those seven dirty words on television. More recently, Bill O'Reilly fretted that gangsta rap lyrics would corrupt my generation.
Today, many on the right seem to think that words don't matter at all. President Trump was caught bragging that he grabs and kisses women without their permission. His supporters didn't care.
Meanwhile, leftist activists so radical that they'll use force to advance their ends want to ... stop hack pundits from entertaining fratty undergrads.
Are Coulter and Milo offensive? Sure. Are they reactionaries? Sure. But if the masked "anti-fa" protesters want to change the world -- which I suppose they do -- they would do well to imitate the successful leftism of the old civil rights, anti-war or union movements, with their focus on concrete gains against power, and to forget the critical race theorists, whose Ivory Tower obsession with speech in the 1980s and 1990s yielded nothing for marginalized groups.
Left-wing students are embracing the notion that words do as much harm as the sticks, stones, and laws and institutions that oppress minority groups -- but enforcing silence won't get them anywhere.
Fifteen years ago, when I was a student at Claremont, undergrads were upset about abusive policing. In the spring of 1999, Irvin Landrum Jr., an 18-year-old black man, was shot and killed during a traffic stop. The officers who shot him said they recovered a gun, but it was last registered to the police chief in a neighboring municipality. Calls for an independent investigation into the shooting, and for reforms to policing in Claremont and beyond, were the biggest activist causes during my years on campus.
Today, Claremont students still care about abusive policing. But there is no major movement to transform the Claremont City Council or police department. Students most recently attracted media attention for mobilizing against an individual whose politics they dislike: They shut down a speech by Heather Mac Donald, a Manhattan Institute scholar who studies policing and has criticized Black Lives Matter.
But even if Mac Donald never speaks in public again, police departments will continue to use excessive force. There's no plausible cause and effect that I can discern.
When radicals disrupt speaking events, they damage 1st Amendment rights, fuel polarization and raise the profile of right-wing provocateurs, all without doing anything to stop "the operation of the machines."
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California is at the center of the ongoing, nationwide conflict over free speech on college campuses. The latest installment: After Ann Coulter was invited, and then disinvited, to speak at UC Berkeley, university administrators tried to placate the conservative polemicist by rescheduling the event. But they made clear that they couldn't guarantee her safety, and it looks as though Coulter might not show up after all.
Administrators are worried that the black-clad radicals who protested against alt-right provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos in February will disrupt the streets of Berkeley again -- a sad indication that the flagship public university of America's most populist state is unable to protect the constitutional rights of invited speakers.
However the Coulter affair comes to a close, though, a larger question will remain unanswered: Why do leftists care about an Ann Coulter speech, of all things? Why a Milo speech before that? Since when have protesters focused on preemptively silencing troll columnists? Since when, more importantly, have radicals taken aim at individuals rather than institutions?
He cared about the machine -- the system -- not its loudmouthed byproducts.
Prior to that speech, he railed against the San Francisco Hotel Assn. for denying equal employment opportunities to blacks, and traveled to Mississippi for the Freedom Summer protests against Jim Crow. Soon afterward, Berkeley's radical left would organize one of the earliest mass protests against the Vietnam War.
Back then, conservatives were the ones who worried that words would hurt us, even when they weren't aimed at authority figures. Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan supporters didn't want George Carlin saying those seven dirty words on television. More recently, Bill O'Reilly fretted that gangsta rap lyrics would corrupt my generation.
Today, many on the right seem to think that words don't matter at all. President Trump was caught bragging that he grabs and kisses women without their permission. His supporters didn't care.
Meanwhile, leftist activists so radical that they'll use force to advance their ends want to ... stop hack pundits from entertaining fratty undergrads.
Are Coulter and Milo offensive? Sure. Are they reactionaries? Sure. But if the masked "anti-fa" protesters want to change the world -- which I suppose they do -- they would do well to imitate the successful leftism of the old civil rights, anti-war or union movements, with their focus on concrete gains against power, and to forget the critical race theorists, whose Ivory Tower obsession with speech in the 1980s and 1990s yielded nothing for marginalized groups.
Left-wing students are embracing the notion that words do as much harm as the sticks, stones, and laws and institutions that oppress minority groups -- but enforcing silence won't get them anywhere.
Fifteen years ago, when I was a student at Claremont, undergrads were upset about abusive policing. In the spring of 1999, Irvin Landrum Jr., an 18-year-old black man, was shot and killed during a traffic stop. The officers who shot him said they recovered a gun, but it was last registered to the police chief in a neighboring municipality. Calls for an independent investigation into the shooting, and for reforms to policing in Claremont and beyond, were the biggest activist causes during my years on campus.
Today, Claremont students still care about abusive policing. But there is no major movement to transform the Claremont City Council or police department. Students most recently attracted media attention for mobilizing against an individual whose politics they dislike: They shut down a speech by Heather Mac Donald, a Manhattan Institute scholar who studies policing and has criticized Black Lives Matter.
But even if Mac Donald never speaks in public again, police departments will continue to use excessive force. There's no plausible cause and effect that I can discern.
When radicals disrupt speaking events, they damage 1st Amendment rights, fuel polarization and raise the profile of right-wing provocateurs, all without doing anything to stop "the operation of the machines."
California is at the center of the ongoing, nationwide conflict over free speech on college campuses. The latest installment: After Ann Coulter was invited, and then disinvited, to speak at UC Berkeley, university administrators tried to placate the conservative polemicist by rescheduling the event. But they made clear that they couldn't guarantee her safety, and it looks as though Coulter might not show up after all.
Administrators are worried that the black-clad radicals who protested against alt-right provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos in February will disrupt the streets of Berkeley again -- a sad indication that the flagship public university of America's most populist state is unable to protect the constitutional rights of invited speakers.
However the Coulter affair comes to a close, though, a larger question will remain unanswered: Why do leftists care about an Ann Coulter speech, of all things? Why a Milo speech before that? Since when have protesters focused on preemptively silencing troll columnists? Since when, more importantly, have radicals taken aim at individuals rather than institutions?
He cared about the machine -- the system -- not its loudmouthed byproducts.
Prior to that speech, he railed against the San Francisco Hotel Assn. for denying equal employment opportunities to blacks, and traveled to Mississippi for the Freedom Summer protests against Jim Crow. Soon afterward, Berkeley's radical left would organize one of the earliest mass protests against the Vietnam War.
Back then, conservatives were the ones who worried that words would hurt us, even when they weren't aimed at authority figures. Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan supporters didn't want George Carlin saying those seven dirty words on television. More recently, Bill O'Reilly fretted that gangsta rap lyrics would corrupt my generation.
Today, many on the right seem to think that words don't matter at all. President Trump was caught bragging that he grabs and kisses women without their permission. His supporters didn't care.
Meanwhile, leftist activists so radical that they'll use force to advance their ends want to ... stop hack pundits from entertaining fratty undergrads.
Are Coulter and Milo offensive? Sure. Are they reactionaries? Sure. But if the masked "anti-fa" protesters want to change the world -- which I suppose they do -- they would do well to imitate the successful leftism of the old civil rights, anti-war or union movements, with their focus on concrete gains against power, and to forget the critical race theorists, whose Ivory Tower obsession with speech in the 1980s and 1990s yielded nothing for marginalized groups.
Left-wing students are embracing the notion that words do as much harm as the sticks, stones, and laws and institutions that oppress minority groups -- but enforcing silence won't get them anywhere.
Fifteen years ago, when I was a student at Claremont, undergrads were upset about abusive policing. In the spring of 1999, Irvin Landrum Jr., an 18-year-old black man, was shot and killed during a traffic stop. The officers who shot him said they recovered a gun, but it was last registered to the police chief in a neighboring municipality. Calls for an independent investigation into the shooting, and for reforms to policing in Claremont and beyond, were the biggest activist causes during my years on campus.
Today, Claremont students still care about abusive policing. But there is no major movement to transform the Claremont City Council or police department. Students most recently attracted media attention for mobilizing against an individual whose politics they dislike: They shut down a speech by Heather Mac Donald, a Manhattan Institute scholar who studies policing and has criticized Black Lives Matter.
But even if Mac Donald never speaks in public again, police departments will continue to use excessive force. There's no plausible cause and effect that I can discern.
When radicals disrupt speaking events, they damage 1st Amendment rights, fuel polarization and raise the profile of right-wing provocateurs, all without doing anything to stop "the operation of the machines."
"This administration deserves no credit for just barely averting a crisis they themselves set in motion," said one Democratic senator.
While welcoming reporting that the Trump administration will release more than $5 billion in federal funding for schools that it has been withholding for nearly a month, U.S. educators and others said Friday that the funds should never have been held up in the first place and warned that the attempt to do so was just one part of an ongoing campaign to undermine public education.
The Trump administration placed nearly $7 billion in federal education funding for K-12 public schools under review last month, then released $1.3 billion of it last week amid legal action and widespread backlash. An administration official speaking on condition of anonymity told The Washington Post that all reviews of remaining funding are now over.
"There is no good reason for the chaos and stress this president has inflicted on students, teachers, and parents across America for the last month, and it shouldn't take widespread blowback for this administration to do its job and simply get the funding out the door that Congress has delivered to help students," U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee Vice Chair Patty Murray (D-Wash.) said Friday.
"This administration deserves no credit for just barely averting a crisis they themselves set in motion," Murray added. "You don't thank a burglar for returning your cash after you've spent a month figuring out if you'd have to sell your house to make up the difference."
🚨After unlawfully withholding billions in education funding for schools, the Trump Admin. has reversed course.This is a massive victory for students, educators, & families who depend on these essential resources.And it's a testament to public pressure & relentless organizing.
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— Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley (@pressley.house.gov) July 25, 2025 at 1:42 PM
Skye Perryman, president and CEO of Democracy Forward—which represents plaintiffs in a lawsuit challenging the Trump administration's funding freeze—said Friday that "if these reports are true, this is a major victory for public education and the communities it serves."
"This news following our legal challenge is a direct result of collective action by educators, families, and advocates across the country," Perryman asserted. "These funds are critical to keeping teachers in classrooms, supporting students in vulnerable conditions, and ensuring schools can offer the programs and services that every child deserves."
"While this development shows that legal and public pressure can make a difference, school districts, parents, and educators should not have to take the administration to court to secure funds for their students," she added. "Our promise to the people remains: We will go to court to protect the rights and well-being of all people living in America."
Democratic Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes—a plaintiff in a separate lawsuit challenging the withholding—attributed the administration's backpedaling to litigatory pressure, arguing that the funding "should never have been withheld in the first place."
They released the 7 B IN SCHOOL FUNDS!! This is a huge win. It means fighting back matters. Fighting for what kids & communities need is always the right thing to do! www.washingtonpost.com/education/20...
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— Randi Weingarten (@rweingarten.bsky.social) July 25, 2025 at 11:46 AM
Becky Pringle, president of the National Education Association—the largest U.S. labor union—said in a statement: "Playing games with students' futures has real-world consequences. School districts in every state have been scrambling to figure out how they will continue to meet student needs without this vital federal funding, and many students in parts of the country have already headed back to school. These reckless funding delays have undermined planning, staffing, and support services at a time when schools should be focused on preparing students for success."
"Sadly, this is part of a broader pattern by this administration of undermining public education—starving it of resources, sowing distrust, and pushing privatization at the expense of the nation's most vulnerable students," Pringle added. "And they are doing this at the same time Congress has passed a budget bill that will devastate our students, schools, and communities by slashing funds meant for public education, healthcare, and keeping students from their school meals—all to finance massive tax breaks for billionaires."
While expanding support for private education, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act signed by President Donald Trump earlier this month weakens public school programs including before- and after-school initiatives and services for English language learners.
"Sadly, this is part of a broader pattern by this administration of undermining public education."
Trump also signed an executive order in March directing Education Secretary Linda McMahon to begin the process of shutting down the Department of Education—a longtime goal of Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation-led roadmap for a far-right takeover and gutting of the federal government closely linked to Trump, despite his unconvincing efforts to distance himself from the highly controversial and unpopular plan.
Earlier this week, the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office determined that the U.S. Health and Human Services Department illegally impounded crucial funds from the Head Start program, which provides comprehensive early childhood education, health, nutrition, and other services to low-income families.
"Instead of spending the last many weeks figuring out how to improve after-school options and get our kids' reading and math scores up, because of President Trump, communities across the country have been forced to spend their time cutting back on tutoring options and sorting out how many teachers they will have to lay off," Murray noted.
"It's time for President Trump, Secretary McMahon, and [Office of Management and Budget Director] Russ Vought to stop playing games with students' futures and families' livelihoods—and end their illegal assault on our students and their schools," the senator added.
"You want history books to not record you as an evil genocide supporter?" said one organizer. "You need to actually make an impact, NOW."
U.S. college students are still facing punishment for protesting Israel's U.S.-backed bombardment of Gaza and its starvation of more than 2 million Palestinians there, with Columbia University announcing this week the suspension and expulsion of dozens of students who spoke out over the past year.
But a number of observers have pointed to a shift in the rhetoric of some of the student organizers' biggest detractors in recent days, with former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton notably saying Thursday that "thousands of children in Gaza are at risk of starvation while trucks full of food sit waiting across the border" and calling for "the full flow of humanitarian assistance" to be restored.
Clinton didn't mention the Israeli blockade that has kept food from reaching Palestinians, more than 120 of whom have now died of starvation, or the at least $12.5 billion in military aid the U.S. has provided to Israel since the blockade first began in October 2023—in violation of U.S. laws prohibiting the government from giving military aid to countries that block humanitarian aid.
The former Democratic presidential nominee also didn't acknowledge the remarks she made in May 2024 about the campus protests that were spreading across the country, with students demanding that their schools divest from companies that work with the Israeli government and that the country end its support for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).
At the time, Clinton said students who oppose Israel's policies in Gaza and the West Bank "don't know very much" about the conflict there. Clinton and other politicians from both the Democratic and Republican parties have repeated the familiar phrase, "Israel has a right to defend itself" as the IDF has attacked so-called "safe zones," hospitals, and refugee camps.
Some suggested her comments on Thursday appeared to be those of an influential political figure who's come to a realization about the situation that both the Biden and Trump administrations, with bipartisan support from Congress, have helped to bring about in Gaza.
"Seems mostly like all the recent photos of starving children are responsible for this shift, though humanitarian aid groups have been warning about this for months and months," said Washington Post reporter Jeff Stein.
One observer said Clinton and a number of European leaders are speaking out now because Israel has already "carried out their final solution."
As Common Dreams reported this week, Integrated Food Security Phase Classification has said that 85% of people in Gaza are now in Phase 5 of famine, defined at "an extreme deprivation of food."
New York Times columnist Megan Stack said she welcomed anyone who is "[waking] up" to the reality of man-made mass starvation made possible by U.S. support, but called it "an absolute indictment of the center-left, such as it is, that it took pictures of dying, skeletal babies with trash bags for diapers to muster this pale response."
"Subtext: We can stomach mass bombings, but starvation is a bridge too far," said Stack.
The comments from Clinton coincided with a shift in the corporate media's coverage of Gaza, with major outlets focusing heavily on the impact of starvation.
Organizer and attorney Aaron Regunberg said that instead of simply doing "reputational damage control by speaking up in these very last moments," powerful political leaders must "shut shit down."
"You want history books to not record you as an evil genocide supporter?" said Regunberg. "One speech now—after countless speeches condemning those who have been speaking out—ain't gonna cut it... You need to go to Gaza. You need to actually make an impact, NOW."
Progressive organizer Lindsey Boylan wondered whether establishment leaders "will ever admit that smearing all protests to stop the genocide actually contributed to the genocide."
"Few people could have played a more pivotal role in shaping the democratic response to prevent genocide," said Boylan of Clinton's comments. "Now here we are. Watching mass death of kids."
On Friday, U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who has consistently demanded that the Biden and Trump administrations stop funding Israel's assault on Gaza and warned of the impact mass starvation would have, issued his latest call for U.S. support to end immediately.
"American taxpayer dollars are being used to starve children, bomb civilians, and support the cruelty of [Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu and his criminal ministers," said Sanders. "Enough is enough. The White House and Congress must immediately act to end this war using the full scope of American influence. No more military aid to the Netanyahu government. History will condemn those who fail to act in the face of this horror."
Trump earlier this year lobbed baseless accusations at South African President Cyril Ramaphosa that his government was engaging in "genocide" against white farmers.
A Friday report from Reuters claims that a senior Trump administration official recently informed diplomats in South Africa that a refugee program set up by U.S. President Donald Trump earlier this year was explicitly intended for white people.
According to Reuters, American diplomats in South Africa earlier this month asked the U.S. State Department whether it was allowed to process refugee claims from South African citizens who spoke the Afrikaans language but who were of mixed-race descent.
The diplomats received a response from Spencer Chretien, the senior bureau official in the State Department's Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration, who informed them that "the program is intended for white people," writes Reuters.
The State Department told Reuters that the scope of the program is actually broader than what was outlined in Chretien's message and that its policy is "to consider both Afrikaners and other racial minorities for resettlement," which lines up with guidance posted earlier this year stating that applicants for refugee status under the program "must be of Afrikaner ethnicity or be a member of a racial minority in South Africa."
Trump back in February issued an executive order establishing a refugee program for what the order described as "Afrikaners in South Africa who are victims of unjust racial discrimination." The president also lobbed baseless accusations at South African President Cyril Ramaphosa this past May that his government was engaging in "genocide" against white farmers in his country.
The notion that whites in South Africa face severe racial discrimination, let alone the threat of genocide, is difficult to square with the reality that white South Africans own three-quarters of the private land in the nation despite being a mere 7% of the population.
Dara Lind of the American Immigration Council, reacting to the Reuters report, explained on social media platform Bluesky the reasons that Trump's refugee program for Afrikaners is highly unusual. Lind pointed to the fact that the United States government at the moment is still trying to block refugees who have already gone through a two-year vetting process from entering the country, whereas it let many Afrikaner refugees into the country after a mere two weeks of vetting.
"Two years of vetting is insufficient, but two weeks is enough to know if someone will 'be assimilated easily'—as admin officials said when the Afrikaners came," she observed.