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Bannon Will Address Berkeley, a Hotbed of Conflict Over Free Speech

Stephen K. Bannon on Friday at his Capitol Hill townhouse. He has agreed to speak at the University of California, Berkeley, this month.Credit...Lexey Swall for The New York Times

The University of California, Berkeley, has erupted this year in response to planned speeches by conservative flamethrowers like Milo Yiannopoulos and Ann Coulter. On Tuesday, another figure was added to the mix: Stephen K. Bannon, the right-wing media executive and former chief strategist to President Trump.

Mr. Bannon has agreed to speak this month as part of Free Speech Week, a four-day event organized by The Berkeley Patriot, a conservative student publication. Mr. Yiannopoulos is also scheduled to appear.

Bryce Kasamoto, The Berkeley Patriot’s spokesman, confirmed in a Facebook message on Tuesday evening that Mr. Bannon and Mr. Yiannopoulos would appear at the event, which runs from Sept. 24-27. He indicated that there would be additional speakers but said that he could not name them yet because his group was “still working with the university and law enforcement to finalize our itinerary.”

“It’s a valuable opportunity to have such a high-profile figure, who rarely speaks in public, come to our university,” Mr. Kasamoto, a senior at Berkeley, said of Mr. Bannon in an interview on Wednesday. He added that he and his fellow organizers — Mike Wright, also a senior, and Pranav Jandhyala, a sophomore — had invited both conservatives and liberals to speak.

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Protesters started a fire on Berkeley’s campus in February during a rally against the scheduled appearance of Milo Yiannopoulos. The speech was canceled.Credit...Ben Margot/Associated Press

“Even if you don’t agree with him politically,” he said, Mr. Bannon “was one of the most influential figures in the 2016 election.”

Dan Mogulof, a spokesman for the university, said Tuesday that the event’s organizers had not submitted any of the information or forms required for the university to provide security: a description of the events, for example, and a police services request form. The requirements are outlined in Berkeley’s events policy, he noted, and “they just have not completed any of that.”

Mr. Mogulof said that university officials had already let some deadlines slide, but that they could not wait beyond the end of this week.

“This is all about providing to them the security they want and we want to offer for their events, and it can’t happen overnight,” he said. For a speech by the conservative commentator Ben Shapiro on Thursday, organized by the Berkeley College Republicans, the university is bringing in “a huge number” of police officers and “spending hundreds of thousands of dollars,” he added. “The logistics are exceedingly complex.”

Mr. Kasamoto said that he, Mr. Wright and Mr. Jandhyala had met Wednesday morning with the university’s events coordinator, and that they wanted “to make this a positive, collaborative experience.” In his Facebook message on Tuesday, he wrote, “We hope that ‘campus officials’ will contact us directly about any of their concerns regarding our efforts to make this event a success for the Berkeley community.”

Mr. Mogulof said Tuesday that the student organizers “know exactly” what the requirements are and that university officials had “repeatedly asked” them to provide specific documents.

Berkeley has been a hotbed of controversy this year, with a series of planned — and, in some cases, later canceled — speeches by conservatives whom opponents accused of promoting bigotry.

In February, Berkeley canceled a speech by Mr. Yiannopoulos — a former Breitbart News editor who has gleefully rejected “political correctness” and denigrated feminists, Muslims, transgender people and other groups — after initially peaceful protests on campus turned violent. Ms. Coulter, a conservative commentator known for many similar stances, was scheduled to speak in April, but the university canceled the event a week beforehand, saying it could not assure “the safety of Ms. Coulter, the event sponsors, audience and bystanders.” Both speakers had been invited by the Berkeley College Republicans.

Conservatives, including Mr. Yiannopoulos and Ms. Coulter, have accused the university of suppressing free speech. Many noted that Berkeley was the birthplace of the free speech movement and a cradle of liberal activism in the 1960s, and accused its students of having different standards for liberal and conservative speech. Opponents argued in response that the views Mr. Yiannopoulos and Ms. Coulter promoted against marginalized groups should be outside the bounds of civil discourse.

But when Mayor Jesse Arreguin of Berkeley asked the university last month to cancel Mr. Yiannopoulos’s Free Speech Week address, the university declined, saying it would not reject student groups’ invited speakers based on their political beliefs.

Mr. Kasamoto said that the organizers were working with the university police and the Berkeley Police Department “to plan for the worst situation that could happen,” but that they hoped guests would come in search of “healthy discussion.”

“This event is meant to serve as an example for the rest of the country that we can engage in political conversation without violence,” he said.

Follow Maggie Astor on Twitter: @MaggieAstor.

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