FREE SPEECH

UC Berkeley Republicans: We’ll Sue if Ann Coulter Is Barred

University says safety concerns triggered cancellation.

College Republicans at the University of California-Berkeley are threatening to sue the school if conservative commentator Ann Coulter is barred from speaking there. In a letter to an administrator and an attorney, Harmeet Dhillon, a former vice chair of the California GOP, said she would file a federal lawsuit alleging an infringement of students’ constitutional rights to free speech. “It is a sad day indeed when the birthplace of the Free Speech Movement is morphing before our eyes into the cemetery of free speech on college campuses,” Dhillon wrote. The university canceled the event last week, citing safety concerns based on “very specific intelligence regarding threats that pose a grave danger to the speaker.”