Conspiring to stifle free speech is a crime: Glenn Reynolds – USA TODAY

Glenn Harlan Reynolds Published 6:04 a.m. ET Feb. 6, 2017 | Updated 59 minutes ago

A University of California Berkeley spokesman says a small group turned protests violent, as Breitbart editor Milo Yiannopoulos came to speak. The spokesman added that it's not a proud day for the Berkeley campus. (Feb. 2) AP

Protesters at the University of California-Berkeley on Feb. 1, 2017.(Photo: Elijah Nouvelage, Getty Images)

They told me if Donald Trump were elected, voices of dissent would be shut down by fascist mobs.And they were right!

At the University of California, Berkeley campus, for example, gay conservative speaker Milo Yiannopoulos had to be evacuated, and his speech cancelled, because masked rioters beat people, smashed windows, and started fires.Protesters threw commercial fireworks at police.

According to CNN:The violent protesters tore down metal barriers, set fires near the campus bookstore and damaged the construction site of a new dorm. One woman wearing a red Trump hat was pepper sprayed in the face while being interviewed byCNN affiliate KGO. . . . As police dispersed the crowd from campus, a remaining group of protestersmoved into downtown Berkeley and smashed windows at several local banks.No arrests were made throughout the night.

According to CNN, the protests caused over $100,000 in damage.

Yiannopoulous wasnt the only victim of silencing efforts.At Marquette University, conservative speaker Ben Shapiro faced efforts by Marquette university employees to silence him.

The Young Americas Foundation obtained Facebook comments by Chrissy Nelson, a program assistant for Marquettes Center for Gender and Sexuality Studies, encouraging people at the behest of one of the directors of diversity to reserve all the seats for the hall and then not show up.The purpose of this was to take a seat away from someone who actually would go.

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So students who wanted to hear a speaker with alternative views would find themselves unable to get a seat, because a university employee had made fake reservations.All, apparently, in the name of diversity.

Likewise, when conservative Gavin MacInnes (a founder of Vice.com) appeared to speak at New York University, he was met by an angry mob that forced him to cut his talk short, while a woman who identified herself as an NYU professor urged police, whom she said were protecting the Nazis by keeping the crowd away from MacInnes and his entourage, to "kick their ass instead of protecting them.

This stuff all looks terrible so bad that Democrat operative Robert Reich was reduced to blaming outside agitators for the violence, a trope that, as law professor Ann Althouse noted, has unfortunate resonance with the Jim Crow era. And President Trump even tweeted that Berkeley should lose federal funding for its inability to ensure free speech rights for everyone on its campus.

Well, the rioters may or may not have been Berkeley students as Althouse notes, since they were wearing masks, theres really no way Reich could tell but I think its safe to say that the rioting happened because they thought they could get away with it. (And with no arrests, I guess they did.) Likewise, I think that the staffers at Marquette didnt entertain any thought that what they were doing might get them punished.(Nor, as far as I can tell, have they been).

Thats because there has evolved on our campuses a culture of impunity: Misbehavior on the part of lefty activists will get winked at, even as other groups (sports teams with sexist appearance rankings, say) get raked over the coals for minor misbehavior.This double standard is of a piece with many campusesopenly taking sides over the election, treating Trumps win like a terrorist attack, while investigating Trump supporters for racist allegations only to find no evidence that they had done anything except say Make America Great Again, as Babson College, a small school in Massachusetts, did.And as CNN's Marc Lamont Hill acknowledged, right-wing rioters are absent on college campuses.

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Whether or not Berkeley loses its federal funding over the Milo riots (and it wont), I think its time for action to address this double standard.First, state and local law enforcement agencies need to target violent rioters who seek to silence speakers.It is a felony under federal civil rights law to conspire to deprive citizens of their constitutional rights, among which is free speech.In addition, many states have laws (generally called Klan laws) that punish people who engage in mob violence or intimidation while masked. These should be applied as well.

Second, perhaps its time to have a Title IX-style law banning discrimination according to political viewpoints on campus.Many states (including California) already have laws banning discrimination in hiring and firing based on political viewpoints.Perhaps we need a federal civil rights law providing that colleges that receive federal funds (which is pretty much all of them) can lose those funds if they discriminate against students because of their political views.

Some colleges may complain that this is federal interference in their internal affairs, but given the limited resistance theyve mounted to intrusive Title IX regulations, it will be hard to take such complaints seriously.Americas colleges and universities have a free speech problem. Its appropriate for the federal government to take action to protect the civil rights of those affected.

Glenn Harlan Reynolds, aUniversity of Tennesseelaw professor and the author ofThe New School: How the Information Age Will Save American Education from Itself, is a member of USA TODAY'sBoard of Contributors.

You can readdiverse opinions from ourBoard of Contributorsand other writers ontheOpinion front page,on Twitter@USATOpinionand in our dailyOpinion newsletter.To submit a letter, comment or column, check oursubmission guidelines.

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