BERKELEY, Calif. _ As conservative commentator Ben Shapiro spoke at the University of California, Berkeley on Thursday, a large group of demonstrators marched around the campus amid intense security triggered by a recent series of violent clashes between far-left and far-right protesters.
Berkeley police warned drivers to expect traffic delays in the area, where large swaths of the campus were closed off by law enforcement officers, many dressed in riot gear.
Authorities arrested at least three people for carrying banned weapons. Before the event, police temporarily banned sticks, pipes, poles and anything else they said could be used to riot.
One of the three held, 20-year-old Hannah Benjamin, was also arrested on suspicion of battery on a police officer, Berkeley police said.
Demonstrators appeared otherwise peaceful. Messages of resistance _ "We don't want your racist hate" _ were scrawled on sidewalks in chalk.
Video posted on social media showed two officers confiscating a man's poster because it was attached to a wooden stick, which the officers said they considered a weapon.
"Hey, if you get another sign, you can't have a stick on it, OK?" one of the officers told the man.
It remained unclear whether far-right and so-called antifa, or anti-fascist, agitators would show up.
Inside Zellerbach Hall, hundreds of students cheered as Shapiro gave his talk, which he titled "Say No to Campus Thuggery."
He scoffed at the demonstrators outside protesting fascism and the counseling services administrators offered to students stressed by his arrival.
"I have spent my entire career standing up to fascism," he told the crowd. "Antifa is fascist. I am not a fascist."
If someone required counseling because of his speech, he said, "it was a mistake for you to have foregone psychiatric treatment" long ago.
Several weeks ago, far-left forces attacked several far-right demonstrators in Berkeley, sparking arrests and much debate about the line between protest and criminal behavior. Earlier this year, protesters set fires and forced the abrupt cancellation of a talk by conservative speaker Milo Yiannopoulos.
As police officers cleared out a section of campus around Zellerbach Hall where Shapiro was set to talk, students said they were weary of the next chapter after six months of protests on and around campus.
Juanna Falcon, a 20-year-old junior studying environmental economics, said she was going to skip the talk. The whole situation, she said, had disturbed the learning environment on the campus.
"I guess there is a limit to free speech," she said. "Hearing out a speaker, that's OK. Sometime I just wonder if all this security enforcement really does something or does it just draw more attention."
Campus officials said they were spending $600,000 on security for Thursday's event.
Sophomore Katelyn Tupen said the Berkeley College Republicans had the right to host a controversial speaker. But she wasn't a fan of the campus shutdown.
"I got to study for my calculus midterm tomorrow," she said.
Shapiro's appearance is a key test for Berkeley, which has been hit by a series of violent clashes between far-left and far-right agitators that have sparked soul-searching in this liberal community about the line between protest and criminal behavior. Berkeley has become a favorite spot for far-right demonstrators to speak out, knowing they can get attention and push buttons in enemy territory.
The Thursday event marked the start of a parade of right-wing speakers who may be coming to campus over the next month. They include former White House chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon and right-wing provocateurs Ann Coulter and Yiannopoulos, who announced that they will appear as part of a "Free Speech Week" event on campus.
The event is organized by Yiannopoulos and a student group, but officials said they are still working on details of the event.
City and campus officials took heightened steps to prevent the sort of chaos that descended on campus when Yiannopoulos tried to speak in February.
Police officers were setting up physical barriers in a roughly half-mile-long perimeter around six campus buildings Thursday afternoon, cutting off access to Sproul Plaza, the site of Mario Savio's famous 1964 address during the free speech movement and a common meeting ground for activists of all stripes.
To pass through the security perimeter, people would have to show tickets for the speech. Those who showed up to protest would encounter an "increased and highly visible police presence," Provost Paul Alivisatos said in a letter to the campus last week.
Businesses citing concerns for employee and customer safety closed early, while a bank near campus boarded up its automated teller machines.
If protesters spilled into the city business district south of campus, along Telegraph Avenue, they would encounter the city's police force _ which is now free to use pepper spray on individual protesters officers deem are committing acts of violence.
Berkeley Police Chief Andrew Greenwood successfully pitched the City Council on Tuesday to adjust a 1997 ban on the use of pepper spray as a crowd-control technique.
Shapiro resigned from the Bannon-led Breitbart News after a colleague of his accused then-Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski of assaulting her.
"Steve Bannon is a bully, and has sold out Andrew (Breitbart)'s mission in order to back another bully, Donald Trump; he has shaped the company into Trump's personal Pravda," Shapiro wrote in a statement at the time.
During the election, his lashing critiques of Trump made him one of the more prominent opponents of the then-Republican nominee in the conservative movement.
