UC Berkeley’s Assistant Vice Chancellor has claimed that the university was told by the Berkeley Patriot student group that the upcoming Free Speech Week has been canceled.
In an email to Breitbart News, Dan Mogulof, the Assitant Vice Chancellor of UC Berkeley, has claimed that the university was informed by the Berkeley Patriot student organization that the upcoming Free Speech Week, set to take place next week, has been canceled. Mogulof said that the Berkeley Patriot group told the university that all upcoming scheduled events have been canceled and that the announcement was “unfortunate” as the university had spent significant sums of money attempting to prepare the campus for the upcoming events.
“Representatives of the Berkeley Patriot student organization have informed UC Berkeley’s administration that all of the events scheduled for the coming week have been canceled,” wrote Mogulof. “It is extremely unfortunate that this announcement was made at the last minute, even as the University was in the process of spending significant sums of money and preparing for substantial disruption of campus life in order to provide the needed security for these events.”
“Claims that this is somehow the outcome desired by the campus are without basis in fact. The University was prepared to do whatever was necessary to support the First Amendment rights of the student organization. Claims made by external parties that the University sought to place the speakers in harm’s way are unfortunate,” Mogulof claimed. “We want to state unequivocally that campus leadership has complete faith in the UCPD, as well as the extraordinary number of allied law enforcement agencies who agreed to contribute additional officers for these events. We are confident that UCPD would have had the necessary resources in place to provide security for the events. We were in the process of spending what could have amounted to a sum well in excess of one million dollars in order to make these events safe.”
Mogulof provided a list of claims:
- Over the course of the last eight weeks campus staff have dedicated a disproportionate amount of time facilitating the planning efforts of the student organization.
- The student organization made preliminary reservations for a number of indoor and outdoor venues. The student organization was provided with contracts for the rental of two large indoor venues week ago, in mid August. They missed three deadlines to complete those contracts and confirm the reservations.
- The student organization did have a confirmed reservation for one indoor venue, Anna Head Hall, which they voluntarily chose to cancel Tuesday of this week.
- An entity called MILO Inc. released rosters of speakers whose names never appeared on any confirmed list provided by the student organization.
MILO issued a statement in response on Facebook: “I’ve just been told that student group the Berkeley Patriot, under pressure from the administration, is withdrawing its sponsorship of Free Speech Week. The students may have pulled out of Free Speech Week but I and my speakers have not. We will release more information in an emergency Facebook Live press conference shortly.”
MILO then posted a letter sent from the Berkeley Patriot group to UC Berkeley which states that the event is being canceled due to “threats” made by the UC Berkeley administration and their employees to members of the Berkeley Patriot group.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan_ or email him at lnolan@breitbart.com.