The College Fix

A student at the University of California, Berkeley, has written an op-ed claiming that free speech is merely “a tactic used by the state,” and that Berkeley should prioritize the “safety of the marginalized” over American constitutional freedoms.

At the Daily Californian, UC Berkeley transfer student Juniperangelica Xiomara Cordova-Goff writes: “Free speech is not dead. It was never alive.” Cordova-Goff, a self-described “brown trans femme,” claims that the American ideal of “shar[ing] perspectives and differing opinions,” and UC Berkeley’s tradition of “discuss[ing] and organiz[ing] with opposite sides of the political spectrum” has “done nothing more than maintain the white supremacist, capitalistic and patriarchal nature that allowed colonizers to protect their power centuries ago and that has allowed their descendants to elect an openly racist, queerphobic, Islamophobic/xenophobic and anti-poverty adminstration [sic].”

It is not clear what Cordova-Goff means when she refers to an “anti-poverty administration.”

From the story:

I’m not here for free speech. I’m here for Black lives. I’m here for undocumented lives, queer and trans lives, femme lives, incarcerated lives and poor lives. I am here for the lives Milo Yiannopoulos and Ann Coulter want dead. I am here for the lives Donald Trump wants to ban. I am here for the lives BCR cannot fit in their “socially moderate, fiscally conservative” fantasy.

What this university needs to recognize is the disgusting irony of pouring thousands of dollars into the recruitment of oppressed people and then failing to protect us once we are here.

With the federal administration’s legislative attacks on vulnerable communities through bans, walls and funding withdrawals, we are at a time where we have a decision in terms of liberation: Are we committed to our peer’s survival, or are we keeping our heads down and continuing the pursuit of a degree? Are we willing to confront our oppressors head on, or do we want to play respectability politics and support university actions that disregard communities?

Cordova-Goff, who is a lead organizer with the Transgender Law Center, claims that Berkeley “refuses to fully dedicate itself to the liberation of the oppressed students on their diversity brochures.” She accuses “conservative voices” of wanting “a soapbox and our death certificates.”

Read the whole op/ed here.

MORE: Ann Coulter pulls out of UC-Berkeley speech: ‘Free speech crushed by thugs’

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