Ben Shapiro's University of California, Berkeley speech went off peacefully Thursday night, a departure from the violence that shut down other events this year.
University officials paid $600,000 in security to make sure Thursday's event stayed peaceful, with law enforcement from all nine Bay Area counties contributing officers to the security force at and around Zellerbach Hall, where the speech took place, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.
The conservative political commentator joked about the police presence in his speech.
"Berkeley has actually achieved building a wall before Donald Trump did," Shapiro said, according to the Chronicle.
The audience was filled with people who mostly agreed with Shapiro's point of view but also some who challenged his views on abortion, sexism, and other hot-button issues, the Chronicle said.
Police reported nine arrests at a protest of the speech Thursday, KRON-TV reported. Most of the arrests involved protesters carrying banned weapons, the television station said.
"For the most part it was an orderly event, attended by respectful orderly people," Margo Bennett, of the university police, told the San Francisco Chronicle, adding that she believed the large display of law enforced proved to be a deterrent. "The crowd in the street was loud, but not violent."
The newspaper reported that none of the so-called antifa, or anti-Fascist, protesters appeared for Shapiro's speech.
The Washington Post wrote that Berkeley College Republicans, with the help of the conservative advocacy group Young America's Foundation, invited Shapiro to speak on campus.
Police had locked down campus and canceled a speech by conservative Milo Yiannopoulos in February after 150 or so "black bloc" anarchists in masks streamed into a large crowd of peaceful student protesters, breaking windows, setting a propane tank on fire and attacking police with rocks and firecrackers, according to the Post.
A planned speech by author Ann Coulter was canceled in April after the university cited security concerns, Fox News wrote.
Fox News said that Shapiro encouraged the sold-out audience to hold civil discussions with people who have different opinions, saying that's what America is all about. The conservative condemned white supremacists as "a very small select group of absolutely terrible people who believe absolutely terrible things."
Addressing the antifi movement, Shapiro said, according to the Chronicle: "America is watching because you guys are so stupid. You can all go to hell you pathetic, lying, stupid, jacka****."
Ray Sullivan, a university freshman, appeared to sum up the feeling of many students attending the speech.
"I personally agree with a lot of what Ben Shapiro has to say," Sullivan told the Chronicle. "I was very concerned about personal safety — thinking of the Ann Coulter thing — but once I got here I felt a lot more comfortable after I saw the police."
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