Free Republic

In the past, left-wing student activists at UC Berkeley have joined unions in pushing for higher wages, including a “living wage,” for campus staff. Campus minimum wages have lagged behind local minimum wages because the university, as a public state institution, is exempt from local minimums. On Monday, University of California Berkeley chancellor Nicholas Dirks announced that the educational institution will be eliminating 500 jobs over the course of two years, which will wind up saving an estimated $50 million. “My concern and the public’s concern is that UC Berkeley is going to start cutting the people it can ill...

Comedian Bill Maher delivered his long-anticipated and controversial speech at the University of California Berkeley winter commencement on Saturday–and it turned out to be a rather conventional liberal address. Though much debate surrounded Maher’s views on Islam, he largely avoided the subject, instead telling students to make climate change their generation’s priority. “I hope all of you here today consider the environment to be paramount among the many challenges we face.” Ironically, Maher would later tell students to think for themselves. “Be a free thinker. One reason our politics is so screwed up is that everyone has become so tribal....

Comedian and pundit Bill Maher is this year’s commencement speaker at the University of California-Berkeley’s winter graduation ceremony. While Maher’s original invitation to address today’s event was uncontroversial, after an on-air argument he subsequently had with Ben Affleck about the nature of Islam, campus Muslim groups at Berkeley demanded that Chancellor Nicholas Dirks retract Maher’s invitation to speak.