David Horowitz Coming to Town
Former leftist turned hard-core conservative, David Horowitz, will be speaking this Thursday at 8 pm in 2050 VLSB. The speech, "Ending Intellectual Slavery” is about liberal bias at Berkeley and other campuses. He is being brought in by the Berkeley Campus Republicans, who seem to have decided that bringing in highly controversial speakers (Michelle Malkin) is the way to go. Controversy and a sense of persecution are a hallmark of BCR activities, and someone like Horowitz is clearly designed to further these notions.

Horowitz's last visit to Berkeley was in Spring 2001, when he delivered a speech concerning the advertisement attacking slavery reparations he had previously placed in the Daily Cal. That event ended in near disaster with the organizer of the event (the Patriot Editor) shutting off the microphones for Horowitz and an audience member who was questioning him before Horowitz stormed off the stage. I would assume that the security presence will be similar this year as for his last appearance ("With metal detectors and a SWAT Team-like police presence, the contrived event was little more than a failed publicity stunt. The preparation was overdone: barricades, UCPD, bodyguards—all in an attempt to demonize the opposition.").

The campus leftist contingent (or possibly meddlesome outsiders) is probably planning some type of protest, which will only work to focus attention on the spectacle and help create the atmosphere of controversy and persecution I mentioned above. Those people intent on leading some raucous hallway shoutfest designed to interfere with Horowitz's speech (as occurred with Malkin) or who are planning to cause a disturbance from inside the classroom while he speaks should take some advice from this Daily Cal Editorial:

Thankfully, the opposition just didn't show up. Despite the misplaced presence of a socialist picket line, we applaud the campus groups who boycotted Horowitz's speech to avoid dignifying it with a response...

UC Berkeley's conservative groups have a history of holding events orchestrated to maximize the inflammatory factor. They seem less concerned with fostering conservative thought than with instigating pure havoc. The motive? To have screaming liberals exposed as Brownshirts. It was merely a matter of time before their tactics were exposed to be nothing but farce.

More commentary from me after the event on Thursday, which I am planning to attend.

Find out more about Horowitz at the website he edits, FrontPage Magazine, and a group he supports, Students for Academic Freedom.Email This Post!