Stopping Riots

            Belgium is a small country divided almost exactly in half along ethnic, cultural, and linguistic lines. To the north are the Dutch-speaking Flemish, and to the south the French-speaking Walloons. The University of Louvain is located just above the dividing line on the Flemish side, but when I went to school there in the early 60s, the university had two mirrored halves, with every course taught in both Dutch and French.

            That didn’t stop the students from rioting against each other. Every fall the two sides traditionally held mock battles, often by pulling cobble stones out of the main avenue and erecting barricades behind which they tossed rotten tomatoes and insults at each other. The city got tired of this one day and paved over the avenue. But that didn’t stop the rioting. So, the university solved the problem once and for all by moving the French-speaking half to a new campus south of the dividing line. End of riots.

            If only such a resolution could be applied to UC Berkeley and other bastions of leftist thought. Aren’t we all getting tired of videos showing hooded rioters setting fires and breaking windows, spurred on by students denying the freedom of speech to conservative invitees who are bound to violate the students’ right not to be offended?

            To end this nonsense, one might cynically propose that Berkeley be paved over. Of course, it would be far more desirable to offset the school’s liberal indoctrination of malleable students by adding conservative teachers to balance a faculty that overwhelmingly identifies with the left. But this balance is highly unlikely with administrators whose preferred solution to conflict is to offer their snowflakes safe spaces stocked with chocolate bars and coloring books to salve their offended sensibilities.

            Maybe Berkeley could hitch a ride with the Oakland Raiders and move to Las Vegas, beyond the influence of the People’s Republic of California.