Education Policy, Business and Technology

Violent protests by visiting mob lead Berkeley to cancel speech by Milo Yiannopoulos

Inside Higher Ed: The University of California's Berkeley campus has a storied history of protests and free speech. But Wednesday night it was roiled by violence surrounding a planned appearance by the highly controversial Breitbart writer Milo Yiannopoulos -- and the show did not go on.

Berkeley police canceled the speech by Yiannopoulos after, they said, "an apparently organized violent attack and destruction of property" forced them to evacuate Yiannopoulos to protect him and the hundreds of protesters and audience members. The Berkeley statement blamed the violence -- which included fires, the throwing of Molotov cocktails, and fireworks thrown at officers -- on a "group of about 150 masked agitators who came onto campus and interrupted an otherwise non-violent protest."

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