This past August, University of California Regents President Michael Drake announced new UC-wide restrictions to protests on college campuses, including the banning of camping, blocking paths, and masking. These were met with harsh student criticism and fears that they would threaten student safety in regards to new digital forms of political violence, such as doxxing. Furthermore, some critics have called the new bans a harsh suppression of student voices, and have compared them to those that were imposed during the Free Speech Movement in the 1960s, during the Vietnam War. “Protest and Politics on Campus” will unite both students and experienced public service figures to discuss young people’s pressing concerns about the state of the world and their campus. For many young people, an increasingly polarized and digital world has brought a new set of challenges for practicing freedom of speech, leading them to wonder how we can engage in political dialogue and free speech in the 21st century, while protecting ourselves from both institutional and political harm.

As UC Berkeley’s campus ramps up to celebrate 60 years since the free speech movement, this panel will look to the past and present to examine changes in free speech and political violence and how students can safely voice their concerns over what is happening internationally and domestically. This panel will examine what these new restrictions mean for voicing political concerns safely and freely, new forms of political violence in our digital age, and the role that social media and a move toward digital harm has played in students' conceptions of free speech. Panelists will be discussing the contentiousness over free speech on topics such as partisanship, foreign and domestic policy, and social issues. The goal of this panel is for young people to reexamine the idea of staying engaged in the political process and solutions to the new forms of subverted political violence that have arisen in the past decade.

This event is part of the Creating Citizens Speaker Series at UC Berkeley, a partnership between Commonwealth Club World Affairs and the Associated Students of the University of California Vote Coalition; it is proudly co-sponsored by UC Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies, Institute of International Studies, and Goldman School of Public Policy.

The Creating Citizens Speaker Series gives UC Berkeley students, faculty, and community members opportunities to listen to and ask questions of leading minds in politics, media, and education as they learn how to become better, more involved citizens. We look forward to welcoming community members and students from around the Bay Area to participate in this riveting conversation and to join us for future programs in the series.