From the Los Angeles Times, an encouraging story about rule of law and freedom of speech coming even to Berkeley:
UC Berkeley keeps a lid on 2,000 protesters, allowing conservative commentator Ann Coulter to speak
By TERESA WATANABE STAFF WRITER
NOV. 22, 2019 5 AMThe protesters gathered 2,000 strong, demanding the crowd shut down a talk about immigration by right-wing commentator Ann Coulter at UC Berkeley this week. …
But Coulter came. She spoke. She left.
And it all occurred without major problems — the kinds of violent protests that shut down a 2017 Berkeley appearance by conservative provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos, drew national headlines and prompted President Trump to threaten to cut off the university’s federal funding.
“What was significant … was what didn’t happen,” UC Berkeley spokesman Dan Mogulof said Thursday. “We did not see the sort of violence, mayhem and property destruction that attended to the event with Milo Yiannopoulos.”
Police arrested five people, including three students for resisting law enforcement. One person was injured during a scuffle with a protester.
So a citizen was injured by anti-free speech goons, but by Berkeley standards, just one casualty due to leftist violence is pretty good.
There was no property damage during the talk, attended by about 400 people.
Matt Ronnau, president of the UC Berkeley College Republicans, which invited Coulter, said as many as 100 students may have been blocked from attending by protesters who linked arms as a human barricade near the entrances. He also said a few students reported that knives were pulled, but Mogulof said police have received no such reports.
Ronnau, however, said the event went well overall and praised UC police officers for their work.
“The rank-and-file … always does a fantastic job,” he said. “If not for them, we could have had a very bad situation similar to Milo in 2017.”
During our Hate Hoax Era, rank and file cops have been America’s main bulwark of sanity.
… But this year the campus was ready after Chancellor Carol T. Christ, who took the helm in 2017, began working with UC police to improve crowd control methods and launched “Free Speech Year” with panels to demonstrate how to exchange opposing views in a respectful manner and learn about the 1st Amendment. ….
Since the Yiannopoulos protest, he said, Berkeley has spent more than $4 million on security measures and made changes in how law enforcement gathers information, deals with outsiders coming to campus, deters plans to stir up violence and secures the speaking venue.
Berkeley has cracked down on the wearing of masks, for instance, in line with a longstanding state law barring them to avoid detection by police.
Masked vigilantes have long been against the law in California, but now Berkeley has finally started enforcing this law against leftist thugs.
The university toughened its policy after many Antifa members and other protesters wore masks while storming the campus during the Yiannopoulos event. On Wednesday, those wearing masks were asked to remove them, Mogulof said.
Another change that has helped keep the peace, Mogulof said, is that student organizations are now closely adhering to a policy that spells out the process for holding major campus events, including requirements for advance notifications, deadlines and planning meetings. The policy was modified last year to clarify the responsibilities of both the campus and student organizations as part of a legal settlement with conservative students who complained the campus arbitrarily threw up barriers to their proposed events, impeding them from hosting speakers.
Since the Yiannopoulos event, the College Republicans have held campus forums with a host of conservatives, including Ben Shapiro, Dennis Prager, Rick Santorum, Charlie Kirk and Sean Spicer.
