Noel C. Cilker

The furor over Ann Coulter's canceled speech at UC Berkeley seems to have mostly died down for now. Though she was rescheduled to speak at Berkeley on May 2, Coulter vowed to speak on April 27, the originally scheduled date. Demonstrators on both sides arrived from up and down the west coast expecting a confrontation, but Coulter didn't show. In a remarkable turn of events, the demonstrations were peaceful. Peaceful demonstrators engage in conversation during the protest in Berkeley on April 27.   Daphne White The free speech debate, however, goes on. In the Washington Post , Pranav Jandhyala, a UC Berkeley freshman who founded BridgeUSA at Berkeley and worked with the College Republicans to bring Coulter to the campus, explained his reasons : "Coulter’s ideas have an audience, and though most members of our group don’t agree with her, we recognize the following she draws. We also understand that many see her as an inflammatory figure with destructive belie...

When President Donald Trump signed Executive Order 13769 on January 21, 2017, suspending the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program for 120 days, decreasing the number of refugees to be admitted to 50,000 in 2017, and suspending immigration from seven predominantly Muslim countries, among other provisions, he was standing on the shoulders of other state and national leaders throughout history who also exercised their powers to exclude groups of people from entering the country. President Donald Trump signs Executive Order 13769. Courtesy Radio Free Europe. Using the government to refuse entry or to expel a group of people is not new. Famous examples include President Franklin Roosevelt and the SS St. Louis  in 1939, the Chinese Exclusion Act  in 1882 and the Alien and Sedition Acts in 1798. The fears that led to those actions are the same we hear now, that we're either 1) afraid that foreigners will compromise the security of our country, or 2) that they will leech the coun...