LOS ANGELES _ Milo Yiannopoulos, the right-wing rabble-rouser whose campus appearances have sparked widespread protests, is headed to UCLA this month _ this time to talk about what he hates about Mexico.
Yiannopoulos said he intends to take on Mexican patriarchy in his Feb. 26 talk, "10 Things I Hate About Mexico," which is being hosted by the Bruin Republicans. He said the talk is timely now as Congress moves to tackle immigration reform.
"Trump and the Republicans make an economic and law-and-order case against uncontrolled immigration from Mexico. I'm going to make the social justice case against importing any more of this particular culture into America," Yiannopoulos said in a text Wednesday. "In other words, what would a third wave intersectional feminist, if she was being honest, say about Mexican society and culture, and in particular the rampant misogyny, corruption and patriarchal oppression that runs rampant throughout its ruling classes?
"To put it another way: What would runaway immigration from Mexico mean for women, people of color, queer people and trans folk?"
Yiannopoulos' provocative appearances at the University of California, Davis and UC Berkeley early last year set off violent protests that shut down the events. He subsequently organized a "Free Speech Week" at Berkeley last fall that ultimately fizzled. That event and another talk by conservative commentator Ben Shapiro ended up costing the campus nearly $4 million in security costs.
The volatile events set off a national debate over free speech on campus _ and a threat by President Donald Trump to cut off federal funding to Berkeley for shutting down the Yiannopoulos event after violent clashes between agitators on the left and right.
At UCLA, administrators say they must allow any speakers properly invited by official student organizations, whether they agree with them or not.
"Universities across the country are struggling to protect both freedom of speech and the lawful freedom to protest, while addressing the basic safety needs of the entire community. UCLA is no exception," Jerry Kang, UCLA vice chancellor for equity, diversity and inclusion, said in an email. "When an official student organization invites a speaker according to standard procedures, the administration must honor that invitation no matter how horrendous or intellectually vacuous. We also do not allow protests to become so disruptive as to silence the invited speaker from communicating with a willing audience.
"That said, we are not shy about expressing our own values. I explicitly and publicly reject inflammatory trolling, designed to trick students into fueling desperate celebrity. Let's have a serious conversation about immigration, or any other matter, instead of taking the bait," Kang said.
The Bruin Republicans, in a statement, said they expected a "very large and anticipated event" since it will mark Yiannopoulos' first college campus appearance of the year.
For his part, Yiannopoulos promised "a post-structuralist feminist reading of prevailing immigration narratives and the patriarchal tropes encoded in contemporary Mexican discourses. And some really good jokes about (journalist) Jorge Ramos."
