Education

DePaul University BANS Conservative Speaker Ben Shapiro

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Anders Hagstrom Justice Reporter
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DePaul University, fresh off banning Breitbart Tech editor Milo Yiannopoulos, announced Monday that it will not allow another conservative commentator, Ben Shapiro, to speak on campus.

Bob Janis, Vice President of Facilities Operations at DePaul, said in an email to the university’s Young Americans for Freedom chapter, “Given the experiences and security concerns that some other schools have had with Ben Shapiro speaking on their campuses, DePaul cannot agree to allow him to speak on our campus at this time.”

“Frankly, this is an embarrassment for DePaul,” John Minster, Vice Chairman of the YAF chapter, said in Shapiro’s The Daily Wire.

Janis, however, may be right to fear the presence of a conservative speaker on campus. DePaul was thrown into a weeks-long uproar following a May visit from Yiannopoulos as a part of his “Dangerous Faggot Tour,” culminating in the resignation of the school’s president, Rev. Dennis Holtschneider, in June.

Holtschneider had released a series of formal apologies to the student body for allowing Yiannopoulos to speak before announcing his resignation.

Like Yiannopoulos, Shapiro has frequently met with protest in his months-long string of appearances at various U.S. universities, but rarely have his supporters been the ones causing the chaos.

In an April appearance at Pennsylvania State University, Shapiro gave his speech under constant fire from protesters outside the auditorium. The Penn State newspaper, Onward State, reports that protesters chanted everything from “Let us in,” and “Black Lives Matter,” to simply “You suck.”

In an even more dramatic appearance at California State University, Los Angeles in February, both Shapiro and his audience had to be escorted by police to and from his speaking event due to fierce protest, an experience for which YAF is now suing CSULA.

The Young America’s Foundation, the organization behind national YAF chapters, released a statement condemning DePaul’s decision, claiming that “Any security concerns we face on campuses are 100 percent incited by the censorious, intolerant Left.”

“If DePaul does not reverse its decision to ban Ben,” the statement continues, “it must immediately remove any claim to support free speech and expression from its website and marketing materials or become a fraudulent laughingstock.”

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