Opinion: Oh, Berkeley — you’ve done it again

Good morning. I’m Paul Thornton, The Times’ letters editor, and it is Saturday, Feb. 4, 2017. With the proper spelling of Berkeley — that’s b-e-r-k-E-l-e-y — in mind, let’s take a look back at the week in Opinion.

I note the spelling because in my time as an undergraduate student at UC Berkeley, a few ticks by outsiders with regard to that peculiar Bay Area city became clear: One, few people get “Berkeley” correct on their first try (in fact, some of the letter writers critical of the university spelled Milo Yiannopoulos’ name right but fell one “e” short of Berkeley); and second, much of the media that swoop in for the occasional campus uprising stick to an off-the-shelf narrative that casts students and faculty as having a troubled relationship with free speech.

In the case of conservative firebrand Yiannopoulos’ canceled speech Wednesday because of violent protests, it doesn’t matter that the agitators were largely black-clad anarchists who crashed the otherwise peaceful demonstration arranged in advance by students and, by most accounts, purposefully turned their gathering into a riot. No, the facts do not assuage critics who insist on believing the kids today are not all right — especially the kids at Berkeley.

Still, those kids fed that narrative, writes UC Berkeley graduate student and Opinion contributor Melissa Batchelor Warnke. And by doing so, they fell into a trap:

I chose to cover neither the bigot’s speech tonight nor the protest. He has a single card in his deck; I’d seen it before. But when I heard that Sproul Plaza, the campus square half a mile from my house, had descended into chaos, I tuned in. And here’s what I saw: Protesters shouted obscenities; they threw firecrackers and bricks at police; they shattered windows; they set a large fire in the middle of campus; they pummeled a man wearing a “Make America Great Again” hat until he bled. Police fired rubber bullets at and deployed tear gas on the crowd after issuing multiple warnings for protesters to leave the area. Students then danced to “We Found Love in a Hopeless Place” and “Drunk in Love” while raising their middle fingers.

Many of the protesters at the event were peaceful. One got on BuzzFeed News’ livestream and pleaded for the public not to perceive the protests as they appeared. But we did; we would; we do now. No music or rainbow lighting or heartfelt signs will offset the photos and videos that have spread around the country. There are helicopters circling overhead as I write this, two hours after the bigot would have left, had he spoken to that room of students.

East Bay protests are often overrun by relatively small numbers of black bloc anarchists, who hijack the message and the intent of these events. Imagine the peaceful protesters anticipating that would happen, and making clear contingency plans for it. Imagine the bigot strolling out into a near-empty plaza, confronted by his own irrelevance. Imagine students moving far away from the black bloc when it became violent, and holding an equally powerful show of nonviolent disgust, rather than gaping and building the anarchists’ crowd. Imagine another student group hosting a well-attended speech on the history of justice movements at UC Berkeley to coincide with his event. In any other scenario, the bigot would more than likely have gone on being the same fragile, cold-hearted creature he was when he arrived, with the same number of devotees. After tonight’s actions, he has many more.

The alt-right and conservative media will slice and dice this footage to show the moral depravity of progressives. Conservative politicians will use this to ends progressives would never endorse; they will make innocent people suffer while citing these acts of extraordinary naiveté. It is the most obvious trap imaginable, and we fell into it. Again.

These are miserable times, and we should be resisting the erosion of democratic norms at every turn. But what happened at Berkeley wasn’t heroic or principled; it was disorganized, and pathetic. Fighting incivility with incivility inspires no one. It makes progressives look stupid, and it makes the people the protesters purport to represent less safe.

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There’s a “No Free Speech Movement” at Berkeley. The university’s chancellor courageously stood up to a group of professors and students that wanted Yiannopoulos barred from campus, but that doesn’t change the fact that there are still movements afoot at many colleges to censor offensive speech. “This is just the latest variation on the age-old argument of the censor that ‘error has no rights,’ or, put another way, that one only has a right to free speech if one is speaking the ‘truth,’” writes The Times Editorial Board. “It’s an insidious notion that needs to be opposed in every generation.” L.A. Times

Battling over Neil Gorsuch is beside the point: The Supreme Court needs an institutional overhaul. Among law professor Jonathan Turley’s recommendations: The court has far too few seats (he puts the ideal number at 19); allow cameras to record and broadcast court proceedings; and require the justices to adopt a formal code of ethics. Turley concludes: “In the Federalist Papers, James Madison observed that ‘no man is allowed to be a judge in his own cause.’ However, the nine justices on the Supreme Court demand precisely that unilateral power when it comes to their behavior. L.A. Times

Neil Gorsuch will likely claim a stolen Supreme Court seat. The vacancy that President Trump now wants to fill was created when conservative Justice Antonin Scalia died — nearly a year ago when President Obama had 11 months left in his term. The last president swiftly designated an eminently qualified replacement, Merrick Garland, whom Republican senators shamelessly denied even a hearing. “The Senate’s misbehavior affected more than just the court,” writes The Times Editorial Board. “It also constituted a new low in the tit-for-tat cycle of dysfunction in Congress, in which each side obstructs its opponents wherever possible even if that produces a stalemate that brings the operation of government to a halt. Working cooperatively across the aisle to solve the nation’s problems has gone out of fashion.” L.A. Times

Trump’s refugee order is cruel. It’s also illegal. UC Irvine Law School Dean Erwin Chemerinsky says the president’s executive order banning entry into the U.S. by citizens of the seven predominantly Muslim countries ought to be reversed by Congress or the federal courts. The Times’ letter writers were similarly unsparing in their criticism of Trump’s action. The Los Angeles Philharmonic Assn. chief says Trump’s order inhibits the “open exchange between artists and audiences.” Jamal Abdulahi, an American engineer who fled Somalia as a boy, writes that if Trump had been president in the early 1990s, he’d be dead. Read more on Trump’s executive orders at latimes.com/opinion.

Don’t root for the Patriots in Sunday’s Super Bowl. And yes, it has to do with politics. Kelly Candaele writes of the team’s friendly relationship with Donald Trump and asserts that it is foolish to separate sports from politics. “My choice is based on political anger,” he writes. “There are those who counsel acceptance and forbearance towards Trump. But I’m in the mood to protest, and I cannot stand to think of Trump calling his buddies on the Patriots to congratulate them on a well deserved victory, one ‘winner’ to another.” L.A. Times

Reach me: paul.thornton@latimes.com