Daily Wire Editor Emeritus Ben Shapiro returned to his alma mater, the University of California, Los Angeles, on Monday night where he slammed the school for its handling of anti-Semitic students, as a new, short-lived anti-Israel encampment was forming outside.
Shapiro opened by speaking fondly of his time at UCLA and of the fact that he met his wife near the campus when she was a student. Then, he went on to describe how the toxic politics of the campus changed him from an aspiring music and biology major to a regular columnist for the campus paper, until he was publicly fired for wanting to write a controversial article about the radicalization of the Muslim Students Association.
“The only thing that has changed is that it’s just gotten significantly worse and significantly more open,” he said. “The question becomes, why did it become so much worse? And the answer is that this university, among other universities, has decided to coddle an entire generation of losers.”
Shapiro cited the intersectional coalition of contradictory groups that are anti-Israel, including Queers for Palestine while the LGBTQ+ community is persecuted in Gaza. He slammed the school for continuing its record of anti-Israel bias by allowing the anti-Israel encampments last semester, which Shapiro dubbed the “tentafada” and prevented some Jewish students from getting to class.
“Of course there was last year when we all sort of watched agog as the administration simply allowed the ‘tentafada’ to take place on campus, people blocking off the quad because apparently they experience a certain joy living in their own feces.”
A student told Shapiro about the encampment actively forming outside and asked what he believes the administration should do.
They’re schmucks and they should expel them.@benshapiro pic.twitter.com/0g8Ysn8R8p
— Daily Wire (@realDailyWire) October 22, 2024
“If you violate the rules of the time, manner and place restrictions, then you should be expelled,” Shapiro said. “These schmucks decide to set up their dumb, fake sukkah in the middle of campus where fake Jews can go to celebrate fake Sukkot…and they expect you to take them seriously?”
Over the summer, a judge ruled against UCLA for failing to ensure equal access for all students, writing that the situation has become “unimaginable and abhorrent to our constitutional guarantee of religious freedom,” reported Jewish News Syndicate.
The encampment reportedly stemmed from anti-Israel “sukkahs,” a temporary hut-like structure built for the Jewish holiday of Sukkot where many Jews eat meals for the duration of the week-long holiday. During Shapiro’s speech, several tents were added next to the sukkah, but after pro-Israel counter protesters crashed their sukkah and police arrived, the anti-Israel students took down their short-lived encampment.
Tonight, @benshapiro gave a speech at UCLA.
Outside, students were building an encampment around their anti-Israel sukkah.
The short-lived encampment came to an end when its inhabitants ran away once pro-Israel protesters and police crashed it.
🎥@will_m1399 pic.twitter.com/BKe2kZhFMR
— Kassy Akiva (@KassyAkiva) October 22, 2024
A video taken by an attendee of Shapiro’s lecture shows the pro-Israel protesters invading, police arriving, and anti-Israel campers sprinting away.
During the Q&A, dozens of students rushed to ask him a question during the Q&A portion of the event hosted by UCLA’s Young Americans for Freedom Chapter.
One tense interaction came with a student who questioned why Shapiro supports the Israel Defense Forces.
“I don’t just condone the actions of the Israeli Defense Forces and the Israeli government, I celebrate and laude them,” Shapiro said. “It is not incumbent on the Israeli government to surrender just because terrorists are evil enough to hide behind civilians. The Israeli government has gone through such extraordinary efforts to not kill civilians that it has managed the best civilian to terrorist kill ratio in the history of urban warfare and it is not close.”
.@benshapiro schools leftist in Israel-Palestine debate: “If we’re going to talk about institutions that ought to be torn down, we should start with the legacy media, which seems to have radically misinformed you.” 🔥 pic.twitter.com/cc8OJxsKqL
— YAF (@yaf) October 22, 2024
“Do you not want a ceasefire now,” the student followed up.
“I do not want a ceasefire until Hamas is destroyed and all of the hostages are back,” Shapiro responded. “There was a ceasefire on October 6 and then there wasn’t a ceasefire starting on October 7.”
Ahead of Shapiro’s speech, UCLA’s administration reportedly tried to derail the event by shutting down the original ticketing platform and disrupting security plans. Hours before the event, a university employee was caught on camera ripping down its promotional posters. Before his speech, school employees prevented hundreds of students from entering the venue until Shapiro’s speech had already started.
Why don’t UCLA administrators want students to know YAF is bringing @benshapiro to campus tonight? pic.twitter.com/XXbEuPM5zw
— YAF (@yaf) October 21, 2024
Shortly before the event UCLA Assistant Professor Noopur Raval tweeted about Shapiro’s presence on campus and attendees wearing MAGA hats, calling him a “beta cuck.” Raval has since deleted the tweet.
On Monday afternoon, Shapiro posted a thread on X criticizing UCLA for becoming “a woke trash heap,” citing scandals including “plagiarism, DEI, riots, furries, BDSM, womxn, and ‘monsterf*ckers.”
Shapiro referenced several Daily Wire investigations, including a March report revealing that UCLA’s medical school mandated students to learn about “Indigenous resistance” and “white colonialism.” He also highlighted a report about the medical school’s DEI lead, Natalie J. Perry, whose only published paper includes large swaths of plagiarism.
“UCLA has forgotten what it’s supposed to be. It has become a service provider to paying customers — woke students — instead of an institution to prepare experts to be the next generation of doctors, surgeons, lawyers, engineers, and leaders,” Shapiro wrote.
Shapiro also shared an April Daily Wire investigationl detailing how the school’s queer student magazine cried for the acceptance of “cringelords, furries, kinksters, and monsterf***ers” and other fringe sexual preferences and identities into the larger LGBTQ movement.
