Palestinian Thugs at UCLA Shut Down My Scheduled Speech
Now YAF is suing.

The freedom of speech is the foundation of any free society. Without it, a tyrant can work his will unhindered, which is one reason why the Biden-Harris regime’s distaste for this Constitutionally protected right is so disquieting. The problem, however, didn’t start with Old Joe and Kamala. America’s universities for decades have been radioactive wastelands of far-left indoctrination, at which opposing views are demonized, stigmatized, and silenced altogether. But one courageous and indispensable group is fighting back.

Young America’s Foundation filed suit on Thursday against UCLA for blocking a lecture I was scheduled to give there on May 15, 2024, entitled “Everything You Know About Palestine Is Wrong.” I made it to campus, under police guard so heavy that it would have been appropriate for a president of the United States or visiting head of state, which only underscored the fact that UCLA officials knew very well that the pro-Hamas protesters they were indulging would turn violent without any hesitation.

Nevertheless, indulge them they did. I was allowed to go to the hall where the event was supposed to have taken place, where I met briefly with the patriotic students of the UCLA YAF chapter, who had invited me to come to the campus in the first place. No one else, however, was allowed in. I had been looking forward to what had been certain to be a hostile but, I hoped, illuminating give-and-take with some of the campus pro-Hamas cohort. Instead, I watched from the window as they marched by, holding their propaganda signs and shouting their moronic slogans, until the UCLA students told me to keep away from the window, lest these indoctrinated thugs turn to the violence that the campus police feared so very much.

UCLA top dogs cited those very “security concerns” in shutting down the event. Given the clear bloodlust of the pro-Hamas crowd, that may seem reasonable at first. However, YAF’s Spencer Brown, who before moving over to YAF was Townhall’s managing editor, explained the ominous implications of this: “These UCLA administrators violated the YAF students’ rights and failed to prevent a heckler’s veto by caving to pro-Hamas agitators. As a public school run with taxpayer dollars, UCLA must remain viewpoint-neutral and is prohibited from picking winners and losers when it comes to free expression.”

Indeed. Colleges and universities all over the country have not been viewpoint-neutral for a very long time, but that doesn’t mean that patriots simply have to accept the status quo. These institutions play a pivotal role in training the next generation, which is why Marxist entities, as well as well-heeled pro-Sharia states such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar, have targeted them for so very long. The pro-Hamas cadres taking to encampments to demonstrate their support for jihad terror didn’t spring up out of nowhere. The groundwork for this has been prepared for a very long time.

That explains why UCLA officials have scant interest in protecting the freedom of speech; they’re on the side of the pro-Hamas thugs. In the face of criticism over the cancellation of my event, UCLA administrators resorted to lying outright. A UCLA official claimed in May 2024 that “there is misinformation circulating that the Young America’s Foundation event at UCLA on Wednesday evening was canceled by the university. This is incorrect. The event took place in the designated location after it shifted to a closed, recorded event as proposed by the organizer and agreed to by UCLA.”

This was entirely false and deceptive. I know that because I was right there on the scene. The event was canceled. Word went out on campus and on social media about the cancellation. Then YAF asked me to go to the campus, as they were going to have me meet the YAF chapter there and record a few videos. This is not even close to anything that could be honestly characterized as “the event took place.” But this is the sleight-of-hand that left-fascist university administrators use all over the country to prevent dissident voices from being heard.

Mountain States Legal Foundation Senior Counsel James Kerwin noted that “UCLA allowed its campus to be taken over by a radical anti-Israel mob, claiming that it could not do anything because the mob had a right to free speech (never mind the violence and property destruction).” The contrast is stark and indefensible: “But when YAF wanted to put on a true free speech event — a peaceful lecture presenting another perspective on the Middle East conflict, UCLA changed its tune and shut the talk down.”

Kerwin drew the obvious conclusion: “UCLA pretends it cares about freedom of expression, but when push comes to shove, it only allows one side to have its say. That is a violation of the First Amendment. This lawsuit will force UCLA to do what it should have done long ago: treat all viewpoints fairly and stop the campus shout-down mobs.” Exactly so. This could be a landmark case for the freedom of speech on campuses everywhere. For the future of our nation, every patriot should hope that YAF will prevail.

Robert Spencer is the director of Jihad Watch and a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. He is author of 28 books, including many bestsellers, such as The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades), The Truth About Muhammad, The History of Jihad, and The Critical Qur’an. His latest book is Muhammad: A Critical Biography.

The Top Ten Jew-Hating Academic Departments in American Universities

#1: San Francisco State University, College of Ethnic Studies

#2: University of California-Santa Cruz, Critical Race and Ethnic Studies Department

#3: Columbia University, Center for Palestine Studies

#4: University of Pennsylvania, Middle East Center

#5: University of Minnesota, Department of Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies

#6: University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, Center for Middle East and Islamic Studies

#7: University of Colorado-Boulder, Ethnic Studies Department

#8: University of Maryland-College Park, Harriet Tubman Department of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

#9: University of Illinois-Urbana Champaign, Department of Latina/Latino Studies

#10: Northwestern University, Asian American Studies Program

Introduction:

Ever since October 7^th, 2023, when Hamas launched its barbaric attack on innocent Israeli civilians—slaughtering over a thousand innocent people, raping and mutilating women, massacring children and the elderly for kicks—the world has borne witness to the atrocious Jew hatred housed in our most prestigious colleges and universities.

Across the nation, on nearly every major university campus, students took to the streets—not to decry Hamas’s brutality but to applaud it as a valid act of “resistance” against their “colonial oppressors.” Chanting genocidal slogans—“From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” “Intifada, Intifada,” “Resistance is Justified, When People are Occupied”—these students, often accompanied by faculty, cheered for the destruction of the world’s only Jewish state.

The revelation that American campuses are hotspots of Jew hatred may seem sudden for some, but in truth this hatred and prejudice has been percolating for many years, aided and abetted by the universities themselves. For the past two decades, the David Horowitz Freedom Center has shone a rare spotlight on the genocidal Jew hatred emanating from our college campuses and raised the alarm. Now, the world at large is witnessing how much ground we have already given up in this fight.

In the midst of this turmoil, the presidents of our major universities have found themselves trapped by their own complicity, forced to condemn the undeniable Jew hatred that roils their campuses while attempting to obscure their own role in abetting it.

As the Freedom Center has relentlessly documented, American universities have played an undeniable role in funding and providing a veneer of legitimacy to anti-Semitic student organizations like the Hamas-funded Students for Justice in Palestine and the Muslim Students Association. What has received less attention—but should in fact be highlighted as American universities’ worst offense—is the Jew hatred promoted by official departments and institutes of the universities themselves.

Millions of dollars in both public and private money is funneled into academic departments and centers, housed at America’s most prestigious universities. These official organs of the university actively promote Jew hatred, glorify in Hamas’s violence against Israeli civilians, and spread genocidal lies about Israel being an “apartheid” and “settler-colonialist” state. They invite speakers and host conferences whose entire purpose is to cast aspersions on the Jews and their homeland of Israel.

Whole academic departments and institutes, under the official auspices of their prestigious universities, violate every principle of academic integrity to cast their lot with the barbaric Hamas terrorists in order to bring about the destruction of Israel—all while the presidents of those same universities declare themselves horrified by growing anti-Semitism on campus. They fuel the atrocious Jew hatred that has overtaken both students and faculty on campus and turned the halls of academia into training grounds for the next generation of jihadists.

The following report will expose the blatant hypocrisy of American universities and their leaders, who express horror at the outbreak of anti-Semitism on campus yet spend millions funding academic centers and departments which actively promote that same Jew hatred.

We call on the universities implicated in this report to take immediate action to discipline these academic centers and departments which openly defy university policy to promote Jew hatred. If they should fail to do so, we urge Congress to withhold all federal funding until they eliminate this cancer in their midst.

Read the full report HERE.