"Shouting Someone Down or Provoking a Violent Confrontation Just Plays Into the Narrative of the Far Right"

"Free speech has itself become controversial. We have a generation of students now who are much more willing to think about restrictions on speech. There are certainly faculty who also believe that. I grew up feeling the libertarian language of John Stuart Mill was absolutely natural. It's what I believe. But that's not true of a lot of students today. They grew up having lots of instructions in anti-bullying, … on what constitutes harassment. They've been told strongly and repeatedly that certain kinds of speech are inappropriate. And so they don't understand the difference between how we say it's right to act in a community, whether it's a classroom or a dormitory, and what a public speaker is allowed to say in a public square. So there is a kind of disagreement right now about free speech. I sometimes say ironically that in 1964 it was the students for free speech and the administration was against it; now you've got this weird reversal."

Teresa Watanabe at the Los Angeles Times interviews U.C. Berkeley Chancellor Carol T. Christ.