Breitbart speaker at Berkeley stirs debate over free speech

The polarizing editor from Breitbart News is a self-proclaimed internet troll who has been criticized as racist, misogynist and white supremacist.

The potential for physical danger in reaction to Yiannopoulos came into the spotlight this month after a man was shot and wounded at a protest outside his Jan. 21 University of Washington talk.

[...] as a public university, Berkeley's administrators are legally bound by the First Amendment to protect free speech, meaning even offensive and hate speech cannot be banned or censored, Dirks said.

Yiannopoulos "gives a voice to repressed conservative thought on American college campuses," Sittler said, adding that he uses "levity and humor" that should not be taken literally.

The number of attempts to keep speakers off college campuses because of their politics doubled last year, according to a report issued late last year by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education.

"The increasing unwillingness to allow anyone on campus to hear ideas with which one disagrees poses a grave risk to students' intellectual development," Ari Cohn, director of the foundation's Individual Rights Defense Program, said in a statement.

There's a "No Milo" at Berkeley Facebook page with more than 3,500 people signed on, calling for a "mass counter protest" to shut down the event.