Just like Coulter and Yiannopoulos?
From Hemant Mehta at Friendly Atheist:
Richard Dawkins has a new collection of essays coming out next month in a book called Science in the Soul. Naturally, he’ll be visiting the U.S. on a book tour.
One of the stops was going to be in Berkeley, California on August 9. It was sponsored by KPFA, a progressive radio station in the area, in a city known for being the hotbed of liberal activism.
But that talk has now been canceled. More.
Jerry Coyne quotes the cancellation notice:
We had booked this event based entirely on his excellent new book on science, when we didn’t know he had offended and hurt – in his tweets and other comments on Islam, so many people.
KPFA does not endorse hurtful speech. While KPFA emphatically supports serious free speech, we do not support abusive speech. We apologize for not having had broader knowledge of Dawkins views much earlier. We also apologize to all those inconvenienced by this cancellation. Your ticket purchases will automatically be refunded by Brown Paper Tickets.
Sincerely,
KPFA Radio 94.1 FM
They did not tell Dawkins this in advance.
Look on the bright side: No one who should be taken seriously will ever buy a ticket from Brown Paper Tickets again. Unless they like intellectual baby food. Takes all kinds, right? And it is good to actually know who they are.
More from Coyne:
KPFA, like so many, is guilty of confusing free speech with “abusive speech”, banning a talk, and thus depriving people of the chance to hear Richard–and probably ask him questions or even criticize him.
Coyne doesn’t grasp, it seems, that to a millennial progressive, all free speech is by definition abusive speech because it is uttered without taking all of his sensitivities into account. Coyne’ll learn.
An appeal from Uncommon Descent to progressive scholars and intellectuals: If the local censorious relent and Dawkins does come to Berkeley, please don’t torch cars. We realize that human beings don’t matter to you but the practice is bad for The Environment and murder on underground insects.
See also: The war on intellectual freedom: How political correctness morphed into a monster.
The war on freedom is rotting our intellectual life: In a world governed by naturalism, power is its own justification. That is the single hardest thing for opponents of rampant political correctness to grasp.
When professors stifle freedom of thought :These protest movements are not 1960s retro; they are a flat-out war on reality, conducted by seasoned veterans with a lot at stake.
Don’t expect a quick end to the war on free speech: The momentum of the campaign will be hard to stop
and
How can we defend the right to think for ourselves? You need true grit and a thick skin