BERKELEY, CA (CelebrityAccess) — Officials at the University of California at Berkeley have canceled an upcoming speech by outspoken conservative pundit Ann Coulter because of safety concerns.
According to the Washington Post, that they made the decision to cancel Coulter’s appearance after protests against then Breitbart editor and right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos became violent.
University officials said they hope to reschedule Coulter's appearance for some time in September and stated that their decision to postpone her speech was not connected to her political views.
“It has nothing to do with anyone’s political views. We believe in unqualified support to the First Amendment. But we also have an unqualified focus on safety of our students,” Berkeley spokesman Dan Mogulof said, according to the Post. “We are going to be making a concerted effort to explain the reasons behind this.”
Both Yiannopoulos and Coulter had been invited to speak at the state college by a campus Republican group and their cancellations are particularly notable due to Berkeley's association with the Free Speech Movement protests of the 1960s and 1970s.
Both Coulter and Yiannopoulos built careers around inflammatory political commentary and a seemingly deliberately confrontational approach to political discourse. Coulter has penned books such as "Adios, America: The Left's Plan to Turn Our Country Into a Third World Hellhole" (2015), "Demonic: How the Liberal Mob Is Endangering America" (2011) and "Treason: Liberal Treachery from the Cold War to the War on Terrorism." – Staff Writers
