University of California President Mark Yudof defended Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan's right to speak at the university's Berkeley campus.
Farrakhan's speech Saturday was billed as being about black empowerment, but was also peppered with anti-Semitic and hate speech, students told The Daily Californian student newspaper.
A petition circulated after the speech by Jewish student leaders, which opposed Farrakhan's speech and character, but not the Black Student Union's right to bring him to campus, garnered more than 350 signatures, the student newspaper reported.
"Louis Farrakhan is a provocative, divisive figure with a long history of racist, anti-Semitic and homophobic speech," Yudof said following the speech, which was part of the Afrikan Black Coalition Conference. "It was distressing in the extreme that a student organization invited him to speak on the UC Berkeley campus."
"But as I have said before we cannot, as a society or as a university community, be provoked by hurtful speech to retreat from the cherished value of free speech," Yudof said.
The remarks come two days after Yudof condemned the disruption of an event on the University of California, Davis, campus featuring two visiting Israeli soldiers.
“I condemn the actions of those who would disrupt this event. Attempting to shout down speakers is not protected speech,” Yudof wrote in an open letter.
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