While the rest of his peers sit back in silence as universities wage war on free speech, actor Rob Schneider, one of the few remaining conservative voices in Hollywood, has again come to the defense of that crucial, constitutionally protected right.
In a tweet that succinctly sums up just how much the University of California-Berkeley has destroyed its once- proud heritage of being the “Birthplace of the Free Speech Movement,” Schneider shames the university for stomping out speech they “don’t like” and helpfully offers an addition to the curriculum.
“UC Berkeley, after your done eliminating speech you don’t like & words you don’t like what’s next? Maybe add burning books to the curriculum,” suggested Schneider.
As Twitchy points out, this is not the first pro-free speech statement Schneider has made. He recently went after “turd” Howard Dean for declaring that “hate speech” – like Ann Coulter is supposedly producing – “is not protected” by the First Amendment.
“ALL speech, no matter how repugnant is protected by the 1st amendment. Howard Dean is a turd,” wrote Schneider.
The ongoing Berkeley-Coulter saga added another chapter today, when the Young America’s Foundation was forced to officially cancel Coulter’s scheduled appearance on April 27 due to the threat of violence from anti-free speech protesters, protection from which the university had made clear it would not adequately provide.
The announcement comes about a week after the university initially disinvited the conservative author, citing safety concerns. After strong backlash for its failure to defend free speech, the university reversed the decision, but with a change in venue and date and requirements, all of which Coulter and YAF rejected. On Thursday, YAF sent a letter to Berkeley’s vice chancellor threatening a federal lawsuit if the university did not agree to host Coulter’s event as planned.
As Daily Wire editor-in-chief Ben Shapiro puts it, this series of events is yet more evidence that the “fascists are winning“:
Fascists are winning. And they’re winning the same way they’ve always won: through outside pressure, combined with feckless and malevolent administration. Where is Governor Jerry Brown and the National Guard, if this is just some sort of basic safety issue? Does anyone truly believe that Berkeley would have cancelled an event for Ta-Nehisi Coates if a bunch of white supremacist protesters had shown up threatening violence? Of course not. They’d tell the cops to knock some heads together.
But they won’t do that with Antifa, because that would violate the politics of the university and the city. So we now have a major public university able to write the First Amendment out of existence for conservatives on the basis of safety. That’s a dangerous precedent, and even the leftist California courts should intervene to stop such tyranny.
Good for Schneider to have the guts to stand up and defend free speech while his colleagues in Hollywood watch what used to be a core liberal value literally go up in flames at UC Berkeley.
