I’m a little late in posting this here, as I published the original report at PJMedia back on December 20 — but for those who missed it:

Bill Maher Speech at UC Berkeley Unaffected by Small Protests

A little background:

Earlier this year Bill Maher was invited to give the commencement speech at U.C. Berkeley’s upcoming winter graduation ceremony. The invitation was uncontroversial — until October when Maher got into an on-air argument with Ben Affleck about the nature of Islam, during which Maher repeated the same statements (Islam is inherently violent, all religion is oppressive, etc.) that he’s been making for decades. But because of the media firestorm over the incident, Cal’s Muslim student groups suddenly became aware that Maher doesn’t like Islam (nor any other religion), and they tried to force the chancellor to rescind the invitation. The chancellor refused, so the student groups vowed to “shut down” Maher’s appearance and prevent him from speaking when the day finally arrived.

Well, at that point the media’s attention was drawn elsewhere, and when the day finally did arrive, no one (except me) was around to document whether or not the Muslim students fulfilled their promise to shut Maher down.

Turns out the answer was “No.” Despite grandiose promises, only a handful of protesters showed up, and the speech went off without a hitch. (Tight security probably helped.) See the full report at PJMedia for details.