Jan 21, 2015 01:11 PM EST By Russell Westerholm, UniversityHerald Reporter

Nicholas Dirks, chancellor at the University of California - Berkeley (UCB), said he did not care for Bill Maher's comments on Islam, but that it was not a reason to disinvite the "Real Time" host from delivering a commencement address.

Speaking with the Huffington Post at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Dirks said he would not have allowed his students to bar Maher from delivering the winter commencement address. As Maher pointed out in his response to the petition against his appointment, the ceremony coincided with the historic Free Speech Movement that took place at UCB 50 years ago.

"I didn't like actually what he said about Islam, but on Free Speech campus, you don't disinvite somebody to come and speak," Dirks told the HP. "So we used it as a kind of teaching moment."

Maher, a satirist whose show is aired on HBO, used the petition as a talking point on several occasions. On his show, he rhetorically asked the petitioners, "where do I go to protest you?" Because in Oct. 2014, he said on his show that Islam is the "only religion that acts like the mafia and will kill you if you say the wrong thing or draw the wrong picture."

Then in Jan., Yemeni terrorists associating themselves with Al-Qaeda shot and killed several staff members of the French satirical paper Charlie Hebdo in Paris for depicting the prophet Muhammad.

"Terrorism is really just bullying, extreme bullying. And I though we hated bullying now. When it happens in high schools, people go nuts," Maher said on his show. "Liberals hate bullying, alright - but they're not opposed to using it.

"When they casually throw out words like 'bigot' and 'racist' it does cow people into avoiding this debate. And if you're doing that, you don't get to wear the 'Je Suis Charlie' button. The button you should wear is 'Je suis part of the problem.'"

Dirks said the act of not acknowledging the protest was meant to be educational.

"Education is not about making people feel comfortable," he told the HP. "It's often, in fact, about confronting people about things they don't like, but teaching them as well how to engage, how to make arguments that ultimately will prevail in the court of public opinion."

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