Via Washington Post:
I am the founder of BridgeUSA, the nonpartisan organization that invited Ann Coulter to the University of California at Berkeley’s campus.
Our organization hopes to create a future in which our campus and our country are venues for free and fair political discussion and debate from all sides. We stand for the preservation of spaces where political ideas can be shared and challenged without fear of violence.
To that end, we decided to bring Coulter to Berkeley today to speak to a body of mainly liberal students on immigration. Unfortunately, threatened attacks from extremist groups forced the cancellation of this event. Let’s be clear: Blame for the cancellation of Coulter’s speech does not rest solely on the shoulders of any individual.
The administration, student groups including ours, external resistance groups and the media all made mistakes that need to be corrected. Fundamentally, though, the system of political dialogue and debate is broken, not just on this campus, but across the nation.
We formed our organization earlier this year after the infamous Milo Yiannopoulos event here, where an incendiary speaker, violent rioters and a divided nation combined to create the perfect storm of political controversy. The university canceled a speech in February by Yiannopoulos, a prominent conservative writer, after intense protests that led to a campuswide “shelter in place” order.
That day, instigation and violence replaced mediation and conversation — and we wanted to repair this breakdown in communication. Our goal since then has been to facilitate dialogue between political opposites, allowing everyone to engage with and understand opposing viewpoints.
We have so far been successful in hosting forum sessions and debates on a series of different issues. We’ve hosted five events in about two months. Many students were immediately interested in our mission, and our membership has expanded rapidly — we have 40 officers and about 150 to 200 members.