Professor Claims 'Neo-Nazi' Ben Shapiro's Campus Lecture Left Students 'Brutalized'

Conservative commentator Ben Shapiro held a lecture at California State University, Los Angeles, in February. One week ago, university President William Covino hosted a "healing space" meeting to brainstorm ways CSULA can block speakers like Shapiro from visiting the school in the future.

In the newly-released video obtained by the Young America's Foundation, Covino can be seen emphatically saying he would "never" invite Shapiro to speak on campus, adding that it was students who invited the conservative personality and funded the event.

"I would have never invited anybody like Ben Shapiro," the president said, later suggesting the university put in place a set of "criteria" that potential speakers must meet in order to be hosted at CSULA.

When asked by a student how he plans to block events like Shapiro's from happening again, Covino didn't offer a clear answer, only telling the student he believes — "very tragically and unfortunately" — the issue of hosting a conservative talker will arise again.

During the same session, professor Melinda Abdullah, chair of the college's Pan-African Studies department, told Covino that she found Shapiro to be an advocate of "anti-blackness," even calling him a "neo-Nazi," which she said is "ironic" because she knows he's Jewish.

"I get he's Jewish, so that's ironic that I'm calling him a neo-Nazi," she said, "but that's basically what he is. A neo-KKK member — let's call him that."

Abdullah went on to say she is hearing from students who feel "traumatized" and "brutalized, physically, emotionally and mentally" by Shapiro's months-old lecture, which is ironic because during Shapiro's talk, many protesters rallying against his him reportedly became violent.

"It seemed more like brutality when students were being assaulted and hustled into my lecture two at a time through back entrances, when I required a phalanx of cops just to get on and off campus, and when the students were trapped in a room for fear of violence just for wanting to hear me speak," Shapiro told TheBlaze.

But the protests against him aren't quelling his willingness to go back to the college.

Shapiro said "of course" he would be willing to go back CSULA, or any campus, adding that "the neo-Nazis who inhabit the alt-right will be shocked to learn I'm one of them."

"The video just demonstrates that the left will slander conservatives without evidence, then use that slander as the basis for censorship," he said. "I pay these people with my tax dollars."

Interestingly, though the university leadership apparently wants to keep people like Shapiro out of the school's lecture circuit, they just hosted Angela Davis, a convicted criminal and 1960s Communist Party USA leader.

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